A new Senate report has rekindled the debate over enhanced interrogation, or torture – an issue of profound political, social and moral implications. We know the context: enhanced interrogation was a desperate attempt to prevent another 9-11. It worked or didn’t. It was used sparingly or wasn’t.

In retrospect, some religious voices make a clear case that torture is immoral and should never be used. Others say that even if immoral in full or in part, the 39 captives subjected to it should be viewed against the larger evil of 3,000 people killed on 9-11.

Mark Tooley, a frequent commentator on matters of religion and politics, writes this: We can be confident of course in God’s love for all people. But until God sets forth the new heavens and new earth, temporal security will indeed require threats of harm or weapons of war. http://juicyecumenism.com/2014/12/10/torture/

He notes that unvarnished torture is practiced by tyrannical regimes and murderous terrorists, often on innocents who don’t share a particular political or religious view. He suggests it’s justified as a necessary evil in order to prevent a greater evil. Obviously, there is a strong, religiously based counterview – some things cross a line, are morally repugnant, never acceptable.

This week’s question is simple, and hard.

What does your faith say about enhanced interrogation – about torture – as an instrument of American policy in a dangerous world?

As expected, our Texas Faith panel of theologians, clergy, activists and experts take a dim view of torture — but come to their views from various traditions that are guaranteed to provoke thought.

The Torah does not permit torture as a judicial method for finding the truth. Neither does the Talmud. Defenders of the practice claim it is justified because of the “exigent circumstances.” Clearly, they were watching too much of the TV show 24 and mistook fiction for documentary. The USA was never, and is not now, in existential danger from Islamist terrorism. Yet we have fictionalized our enemies and it has turned us pitifully fearful. We’ve turned Ben Laden into Magneto and Al Baghdadi into General Zod, so we’ve responded with extreme fictional solutions.

During WWII, we did face a real existential national threat. Then, potentially tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of lives truly hung in the balance. Moreover, we faced enemies who were not only truly bestial but really, genuinely, powerful, yet we did not adopt a policy of torture to gather information, and we prosecuted those who did. That is really all we need to know. The evidence we now have, that the methods used, contrived from Communist Chinese methods for extracting false confessions (!) from American POWs, proved largely fruitless in gaining usable intelligence, only further confirms on a utilitarian level what already should have been obvious on a moral one.

Many point to different things that they believe are indicative America’s decline as a great power, I would suggest adopting the “best practices” of lesser regimes is perhaps the most alarming. It reflects a critical lapse in national self-confidence. I hope we can recover from it.

JIM DENISON: President, Denison Forum on Truth and Culture

Christians believe that all humans are made in God’s image and thus deserve respect. Does this principle mean that torture is wrong, since it brings suffering to humans? Or that it is right, since it theoretically prevents suffering for other humans?

The Bible does not address the issue of torture per se. Christians have been victims of torture (more believers suffered for their faith in the 20th century than all other religions combined), and tragically have been perpetrators as well. In assessing issues of conflict, Christian theologians since St. Augustine have often employed “just war” theory. This approach may provide guidance regarding the morality of enhanced interrogation.

“Just war” theory claims that war is “just” if it meets seven criteria: (1) a just cause (defensive war, fought only to resist aggression); (2) just intent (to secure justice, not for revenge, conquest, or money); (3) a last resort (all other attempts to resolve the conflict have failed); (4) authorized by legitimate authority; (5) limited goals (seeking a just peace); (6) proportional in its effects (the good must justify the harm done); (7) protecting noncombatant immunity.

Did enhanced interrogation employed after 9/11 meet these criteria? Some claim it did not, especially arguing that torture did not produce actionable intelligence which protected noncombatants. Others claim it did and note that the committee which prepared the Senate report interviewed no CIA personnel. Five high-ranking CIA and military leaders recently characterized the committee’s work as seriously flawed with “cherry picked” data intended to disparage the CIA.

Whether we decide that enhanced interrogation was “just” or not, we should remember Jesus’ most famous moral principle: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12).

On analogy with just war, the issue here is not if but how much is too much. Certain kinds of pressure in questioning is appropriate, as a form of punishment for a crime against humanity against someone you know is guilty, but other kinds of threats and human demeaning are immoral.

We should be above those kind of practices. The idea that someone should not be allowed to use the restroom, be suspended from midair for days at a time, or left exposed appear to cross such lines. The use of such tactics also undercuts our claims about being moral and civilized. They should be avoided.

JOE CLIFFORD, Head of Staff and Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church of Dallas

Torture is immoral. Attempts to sanitize torture by calling it “enhanced interrogation” do not change that reality. It is illegal. It violates the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture, an international treaty signed by the United States, along with 155 other nations. While torture may be the lesser of two evils when compared to the murder of innocents by terrorists, it is evil.

Our nation’s leaders decided that to avoid another terrorist attack, the ends justified the means—a slippery ethical slope. Given that much of the information obtained was reportedly known before people were tortured, this immoral means proved inconsequential to achieving the worthy end of preventing another major terrorist attack. Further, even the CIA has questioned the integrity of information obtained through torture.

If it is immoral, illegal, and ineffective, how could it ever be justified? Responding to evil with evil contributes nothing to defeating evil, it just spreads evil. From a Christian perspective, we must be saved from “weak resignation to the evil we deplore,” as the old hymn puts it. Ultimately, Jesus Christ embodies the Christian response to the evils of our world. Jesus did not resist evil with evil. Enduring torture himself, he responded to evil with a power this world could not comprehend, a righteousness embodied in the cross. In a dangerous world, such a response might not be practical for nations, but it is the wisdom of God.

Jewish tradition expresses the same equivocation and ambivalence as the questioner posed this week. On the one hand, Jewish law demands the stopping of an attacker, a rodef/pursuer, by using whatever force necessary, including death, if that is what it takes to defend a life. In fact, Jewish law goes beyond the passive European tradition which imposes no sanctions on one who is able to rescue the victim from the “pursuer” but chooses not to rescue. The Jewish interpretation of Leviticus 19:16, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your fellow” is that to rescue is a binding obligation, a biblical demand, to save others.

On the other hand, every human being, even the enemy, is created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God and should be treated with dignity and respect; torture is clearly a violation of that principle. In addition, our tradition teaches that the rescuer is innocent of harm caused the pursuer but only if the rescuer does not cause greater injury than necessary to stop the pursuer.

Was the torture the most effective way to obtain the intelligence needed to stop the pursuer? There seems to be some controversy over the efficacy of torture, with experts divided on that question. If it is decided that torture was not effective in gaining intelligence for self defense, then torture cannot be condoned by Jewish law and tradition. If the torture revealed information that saved the lives of the intended victims, then torture was justified to save the intended victims of the pursuer. Of course, how does one know the value of the intelligence until it is obtained and applied?

My faith tells me that torture is never acceptable. Never. Under any circumstances.

Many Christian people protested the fear-driven actions of our government in the wake of 9/11 and were called unpatriotic, or worse, collaborators with the enemy. But we were right to protest.

Not only is torture immoral, but study after study has shown that information extracted by torture is unreliable at best, lies at worse. It also increases the risk that Americans — civilians as well as solders — will be subjected to torture by our enemies.

Fear not only makes us stupid, it makes us become the thing we fear most. If we use the same tools of torture as do our enemies, what separates us from them? If we sacrifice our national values on the altar of fear, who are we? What are we?

Right now, the United States is as much a rogue nation as is any other nation who breaks international covenants against torture. And creating documents that claim that waterboarding is not torture may be a interesting intellectual exercise but it does not change the reality that pushing someone repeatedly to the point of drowning is indeed torture.

The consequences of our use of torture will echo down the years for more than one generation, I fear. We have much of which to repent.

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

One of the great things about the Bible is that hardly any form of human behavior is excluded from its pages. Christians might prefer not to think about slavery, rape, greed, or child abuse. But passages of the Holy Scripture compel us to do so.

And some of those passages are truly unpleasant to read. Take Psalm 139, for example. It contains verses that call upon God to “kill the wicked” and to “hate them with perfect hatred.” Take Psalm 137, where believers can find happiness by seizing the children of their enemies and smashing the “little ones…against the rock.” In his letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul calls his religious adversaries “dogs.” And in the New Testament letter known as Second Peter, an Apostle says his religious enemies are “irrational animals…born to be caught and killed.”

Anybody who wants to create a theological rationalization for condoning torture can find words in the Bible that will be the raw materials for doing it.

In fact, Christians have done it. The idea of “enhanced interrogation” was practiced nearly to pernicious perfection in the medieval era for several hundred years during the “Inquisition.” Instruments of torture were devised to inflict great pain by religious authorities and by political authorities who understood themselves to be acting in concert with the church. The CIA has more sophisticated technology than was available to the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. But both used the techniques of “waterboarding” as one method of torture, for example. These methods were used to extract confessions from persons who were believed to be heretics or infidels. Some victims would confess to anything in order to stop the pain. Others, believing that they were being tortured merely as a prelude to being executed, would resist confessing with their last breaths.

For centuries, Christians have condemned those acts of violence that were perpetrated in the name of God. There are three basic reasons that Christians now oppose torture. First, it treats a victim as something less than a human being created in the image of God. Second, it derives from the arrogance of power, whereby the agents inflicting torture assume to themselves that torture as a divine device. Third, whatever confessions torture may yield cannot be trusted, because the one who confesses in response to torture may be lying just to make the pain stop.

We Christians have had our own experience with inflicting, and enduring, torture. It is theologically erroneous, religiously unrighteous, and practically unreliable. Just because somebody can find a way to justify it does not make it an instrument of salvation.

LARRY BETHUNE: Senior Pastor, University Baptist Church, Austin

A strong case can be made on purely secular and strategic grounds for our country to avoid torture for any use as a matter of policy – its proven ineffectiveness, protection of Americans in custody, avoiding reprisals against civilians, the way it inspires recruiting by the enemy, and so on.

The matter is even clearer from a religious perspective. In the Christian faith there is no moral or religious justification for torture, even in the extreme circumstance of a just war. The Christ who calls us to “turn the other cheek” and who refused the use of the sword even in his self-defense cannot be used to justify the torture of enemy combatants.

The dehumanization of the enemy is the first obstacle to a lasting peace and leads to further violence. Even in war, which is always a failure of human spirit and moral imagination, we are called to maintain our core values which view all people as created in the Divine image and beloved of God.

Our recognition of human rights means we treat captured enemies with simple dignity as we expect our captured combatants to be treated. To abandon these values allows the enemy to win by pulling us down to their moral level or below. Other, more effective, means of gathering intelligence are available without resort to cruelty.

Even in the reality and complexity of the war on terror, some matters require moral clarity. Torture is wrong-headed. It is also wrong.

MATTHEW WILSON, Associate Professor of Political Science, Southern Methodist University

Catholic teaching condemns torture as fundamentally at odds with the dignity of the human person. It is rejected not only as a general rule, or circumstantially, but as an intrinsic evil—that is, a practice that can never be justified and is not morally licit under any circumstances.

As a practical matter, we all know that the utility and efficacy of torture are very much in doubt. Intelligence officials and those with interrogation experience seem to give conflicting accounts of whether torturing prisoners tends to produce useful information that would not otherwise have been forthcoming. This very uncertainty makes torture a different moral case from other forms of defense of self or others. “Enhanced interrogation” might cause a prisoner to reveal information that he might not have otherwise, which might actually be actionable and allow authorities to disrupt a plot that might have come to fruition and might harm innocent people. This extremely attenuated chain of possibility must be weighed against the certainty of degradation of the human person—and loss of national moral authority—that is inevitable when government makes the decision to torture someone. And to be clear, the degradation involved is not only that of the prisoner himself, but also of those asked to administer torture.

To ask someone to intentionally inflict severe and grievous harm and suffering on another person is to ask him to release (and indeed to cultivate) the basest impulses of his nature. It is hard to emerge from that morally unscathed.

It also must be acknowledged that the Church’s moral teaching on this score has not always been as clear as it is today. As the Catechism admits: “In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture.” In modern times, however, the Church has come to categorically disavow the use of “physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred.” No end, no matter how humane or noble, can justify the devaluation of human dignity inherent in such practices.

The American leaders who authorized the use of “enhanced interrogation” in the wake of the September 11th attacks faced incredible pressures, difficult choices, and an overriding imperative to protect the American people from harm. It is admittedly much easier to undertake a moral evaluation of torture from our vantage point than from theirs. That said, the teaching of my faith on this score is very clear. The captured prisoner, however heinous his crimes may be, is created in the image and likeness of God, and thus possesses an inherent dignity and moral worth that we are called to respect absolutely.

AMY MARTIN, President Emeritus – Earth Rhythms

In Taoism, to struggle is to do things the hard way. It’s not just foolish; it’s a spiritual death wish. The Taoism sacred text, the Tao Teh Ching, was composed in an era of intense Chinese clan warfare and one-third of the book was directed at leaders of the day. It is not pie-in-the-sky philosophizing; it is practical and efficient.

A Taoist rarely confronts an inflammatory issue directly. That would be like standing in a river and demanding that it cease to flow. A Taoist prescription to fight Middle Eastern terrorism would reject torture and take a twofold approach.

Says the Tao Teh Ching: “Ignore the flower and focus on the root.” Remove terrorist funding by running as fast as possible away from oil dependency. Instead, foster the development of alternative energy with the same fervor as the U.S. did atomic energy in WWII.

To paraphrase the Tao Teh Ching, “War makes war.” The U.S. manufactures most of the weaponry in the world. We are merchants of death. The military-industrial-congressional complex depends on weapons being made and used. Constant war is required. They are not patriots; they are profiteers. Stop making weapons and you stop making war.

But of course, there is no political will for that, not in the populace or the leadership. Oil and military corporations and their banks own the government, and a scan of television and movie offerings illustrates how much we love violent death. The U.S. via the CIA gave $80 million to two buffoons to design a torture regimen that proved to be useless. Imagine what could have been done if that $80 million were used to promote life.

Speaking strictly hypothetically, I am trying to imagine rare scenarios in which torture might be justified as a form of what Bonhoeffer would call “necessary evil.” That is, given that torture is always wrong, I’m trying to imagine how it might be less wrong than not torturing in rare cases. Such scenarios, I think, would need to meet all three of the following criteria: (1) We would need to know for CERTAIN that the person being tortured had information needed to save others from violent suffering; (2) We would need to have no other way of getting the information (this might mean that the situation would have to be time-sensitive); and (3) We would need to have evidence that torturing the person would be effective in gaining the needed information.

As far as I can tell from my limited vantage point as a citizen reading the news, our government has been torturing people when none of these criteria have been in place. We have tortured people who do not have any information that would help save lives. We have tortured people when there are other ways of gaining information. And we have tortured people even though there is little to no evidence that torture is effective, anyway.

My suspicion is that the criteria I have delineated cannot even be met. We can’t know for certain, there are almost always other ways of getting needed information, and torturing is no guarantee that needed information will be retrieved.

My conclusion at this point, then, is that it is impossible to make a case that torture is ever necessary, by way of the criteria delineated here. Therefore I think we should make torture illegal.

And all past acts of torture should be named, condemned, and repented of.

Torture is reprehensible and should not be an instrument of American policy. We are a civil society and to remain civil, we should act civil.

After the battle of Trenton, General Washington issued an order to his troops regarding prisoners of war: “Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands,” he wrote. In all respects the prisoners were to be treated no worse than American soldiers; and in some respects, better. Through this approach, Washington sought to shame his British adversaries, and to demonstrate the moral superiority of the American cause.

By legitimizing, “he would do it again” VP Dick Cheney has shamelessly approved other nations torturing our soldiers. Did he ask permission from the folks that the rogue nations can torture their spouse, parent, kid or sibling caught by the enemy? He has the guts to say they would rather “behead.” The VP indicates his bias towards one ignoring other nations. I hope our veterans will hold him accountable for his thoughtless statements.

We are also a party to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of prisoners of war.

What does Quran say about torture?

Finding the truth is one’s own responsibility, it gives clarity and peace of mind knowing that the causer of life, the creator God is kind and merciful.

Verse 9:5 is projected in the market as, “When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere for them.”

The story goes like this, when you hear me say, “I will kill you” you get all worked up and become aggressive. What an intelligent human would have done was recall what I said before “I will kill you”, and that would be, “don’t rob me or don’t dare to throw me out of my home.” If he keeps coming after you; you repeat the warning and add if you do that, I will kill you” followed by these words, “If you back off or repent, I will not attack back at you, and the bonus, if you ask for forgiveness, I will forgive you.”

This is the formula in Quran for literally every such verse.

9:5 And so, when the sacred months are over , slay those who ascribe divinity to aught beside God wherever you may come upon them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every conceivable place! Yet if they repent, and take to prayer, and render the purifying dues, let them go their way: for, behold, God is much forgiving, a dispenser of grace.

What was said before verse 9:5?

9:4 But excepted shall be from among those who ascribe divinity to aught beside God – [people] with whom you [O believers] have made a covenant and who thereafter have in no wise failed to fulfill their obligations towards you, and neither have aided anyone against you: observe, then, your covenant with them until the end of the term agreed with them. Verily, God loves those who are conscious of Him.

After verse 9:5

9:6 And if any of those who ascribe divinity to aught beside God seeks thy protection, grant him protection, so that he might [be able to] hear the word of God [from thee]; and thereupon convey him to a place where he can feel secure: this, because they [may be] people who [sin only because they] do not know [the truth].

Beware:

1. The Quran had been purposely mistranslated down through history. In the middle Ages, European leaders commissioned a hostile Quran translation to foster warfare against Muslim invaders. Later, Muslim leaders produced another translation to inflame Muslims against Christians and Jews. It was all for politics. Thank God the Arabic version has remained intact and better translations are produced now – the best one is by Muhammad Asad. www.QuraanConference.com

If you think the recent Senate report reveals anything new in our nation’s history, then I’d like to welcome you to reality. Torture isn’t new in American history. Read up on our behavior in the Philippines a century ago. For a little more recent history, Google the name Dan Mitrione—that’ll make for pleasant reading. He taught torture in Brazil, taking beggars off the street as test subjects. If anything, this report brings out into the open things we’d all like not to think about but which we must if we’re serious about being moral people. We mustn’t turn away from it, nor must we hide behind shallow jingoism. If America is great, then we should at least be able to talk about this issue seriously.

Building upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions, the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture defines torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted” by “a public official or other person acting in an official capacity” either in order to obtain a confession or information, to punish, coerce, or intimidate. The Catholic Church defines torture similarly as any act using “physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred.”

Such acts are contrary to “human dignity,” and “against the moral law.” And it is “necessary,” the Church teaches, “to work for their abolition.”

These definitions of torture—representing the moral wisdom of Western civilization—are clear enough. Yet many of our political leaders dodge the question. The Bush administration repeatedly appealed to some hidden cabal of lawyers who apparently “approved” these so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” as if, perhaps, it were a matter of degree. This equates to the sullen, adolescent “I don’t know” of a teenager caught red-handed but recalcitrant nonetheless.

Of course, Obama’s not above evasion either. Remember his brilliant moral commentary on abortion? “That’s above my pay grade,” he said with a straight but electable face. Whenever you want to do something evil, it seems one just needs to act confused or use the word “lawyers.” It works every time.

Some argue that torture, or “enhanced interrogation,” works. Such a claim, of course, will always be debated. But whether or not torture works (and it is debatable) is beside the point. This is good old utilitarianism—which is more of an incantation than an actual moral argument—and it’s dangerous. Now the reason it’s dangerous is that it disregards intrinsic goods such as the inviolable dignity of human beings. Utilitarianism tricks us into thinking that things which are ends in themselves (like human beings) can be coercively subordinated to some perceived greater good.

We can violate the humanity of a detainee, for example, if we think it will protect a large number of people. And the danger of utilitarianism is that it’s a highly portable line of reasoning often suitably concocted and controlled by the powerful. And it has been invoked repeatedly throughout history to crush the weak and the innocent. Murderers and tyrants are typically utilitarians, so we should be careful with this species of argument.

Certainly, it’s difficult and indeed nearly impossible to respect the human dignity of a jihadist. But if we’re moral people, we must. If we’re at all concerned that such reasoning might be used in other circumstances, we must. What is at stake here isn’t just national security. There are holocausts behind us which we must remember.

Now the Church here is quite clear. The bishops of the United States stated in 2007 that “use of torture must be rejected as fundamentally incompatible with the dignity of the human person and ultimately counterproductive in the effort to combat terrorism.” This is not just a statement about effectiveness. Rather, it’s a moral statement. Under no circumstances may a person morally participate in the torture of another human being—under no circumstances. This is the Catholic position. Assuredly, however, many Catholics will either ignore Church teaching here or interpret their burdened consciences into submission, trading words like “torture” for “enhanced interrogation” and other such tricks of language. But this brings us to another point of Catholic teaching, something we should always keep in mind when confidently talking about such things like torture and humanity—and that’s the Judgment. The Church has a definition of that too.

When is a city ban on feeding the homeless in a public place an infringement on religious freedom?

In Florida, a 90-year-old WWII veteran was arrested for feeding the homeless at a public park. He’s been doing it for over 20 years through a program called Love Thy Neighbor. But a new ordinance in Fort Lauderdale has put a mountain of obstacles in the way, making it virtually impossible for the group to operate as it has.

Feeding the homeless in Fort Lauderdale

On one side are local businesses that fear feeding the homeless in a conspicuous place was bad for business and tourism. On the other side are advocates of Love Thy Neighbor who say the group is within its constitutional rights. The city tried to balance the interests of both sides with rules aimed at moving such homeless programs into houses of worship or private property. But the organization wants to continue feeding the homeless as it has, in a seaside public park.

The clash between religious rights and the public interest is a common story line. We’ve weighed in on the dustup in Houston in which the city tried to subpoena the sermons of evangelical ministers opposed to a gay-rights ordinance. And every week, it seems, there’s a new report in which the advocates of religious liberty decry a rule or action at a public school.

Religious liberty isn’t absolute. There’s no right to hold a serpent-handling service at Disneyland. Or to shout “fire” in a crowded church because your religion told you to. Or to build a megachurch in a city neighborhood with a parking lot for only 10 cars.

In the case of feeding the homeless in Fort Lauderdale, the name of the organization is from a biblical injunction. Its mission is an act of faith. And if some businesses are inconvenienced or tourists would prefer not having to see the homeless by the beach, whose rights should prevail?

That’s this week’s question: Is a city ban on feeding the homeless in a public place an infringement on religious freedom? Our Texas Faith panel weighs in:

More than being any infringement on religious liberty, it is an infringement on our human right to care for one another and help those who need help. To restrict acts of compassion because they “look bad” is a strange sense of non-logic when it comes to being humane. It reflects a sometimes American tendency to deny that such conditions exist for some people in the USA (out of sight, out of mind).

To have a place where people know they can come and get aid in a public assembly location is not a bad thing at all. Although I understand a city’s concern, one would think that a city having a reputation of caring about its citizens would be a higher priority and that such a city would make efforts to support something that also would drive down the cost to the city to care for people in need of shelter. Why not compromise and give a designated place in the park for such activity and point to it with a sense of pride that the people of our city care about others in need and has done so for years?

FATHER TIMOTHY HEINES, Pastor, St. Joseph Catholic Church, Richardson

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, by its nature, law is directed to the common good and exists in accord with higher law (eternal law and divine law) and human reason. Even specific laws, laws pertaining to a particular segment of the population must in some way contribute to the common good and also to the forming of public virtue.

In my mind, this city ban is mean-spirited and narrow. If disruptions were being caused to peace, wouldn’t there be gentler means to redress those issues than a specific law banning the feeding of the poor? Wouldn’t current statutes on loitering, for example, more than suffice to mitigate the inconvenience that lies at the basic of this statute?

In our tradition, we also understand that the promulgation of laws is to have a salutary effect on the common good by forming virtue and by encoding the values of a particular community. In the case of this law, I can only think that this law is meant to be particularly punitive and dismissive of the poor. If I were to judge the nature of the community by the nature of this city ban, I would probably not think highly of Fort Lauderdale. For me, this law is bad on the face of it, whether or not it infringes on religious freedom. It is one more sign of modern humanity’s disdain for the poor.

DANIEL KANTER, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas

A quick Google search provides some ‘food’ for thought. It seems like this is less a religious liberty issue and more a city ordinance issue. The city is actually trying to solve the problem by requiring the groups feeding people to provide portable toilets if restrooms aren’t available, to not hold a feeding within 500 feet of a residential neighborhood, and to ensure the food is properly heated and sanitary.

Cities have to make sure they have plans to address homelessness but they also need ways to protect the homeless from food borne illness. They also have to make sure the city runs well for everyone. If this was a religious liberty issue it would go directly to whether one can practice a mandate of their religion publically. My religion hopes I serve the homeless and work for justice but it doesn’t require it. Other religions mandate hours for prayer and food restrictions all of which can impact the public square but rarely do.

Can a man who feels the command to feed the homeless understand his religious liberty to be at risk? I guess he can but it seems reasonable to work with the municipality to make sustainable change. My religion’s directive is to find ways to ‘teach them to fish’ rather than only ‘giving them fish.’ In this case liberty is less at risk as is making a real difference in the lives of the homeless in Fort Lauderdale.

JIM DENISON: President, Denison Forum on Truth and Culture

Clearly, a third option is needed.

City officials want to move homeless programs into houses of worship or private property to avoid offending beach-going tourists and inconveniencing businesses. But what if neighbors of the church or private property object? How many objectors constitute valid opposition – a hundred? One? And why should everyone be able to enjoy the beach except those who are hungry and homeless?

Now the other side: despite objections from businesses and tourists, should an organization be able to feed the homeless on a beach so long as it claims religious motives? If tourism and business suffer, will the city no longer have revenues to maintain the beach? Will everyone lose?

City officials don’t need the wisdom of Solomon – a beach is not a baby. The feeding program has been working for 23 years; they can find a way to make it work again.

We need similar answers here.

According to The Dallas Morning News, the number of chronically homeless in Dallas rose nearly 40 percent last year, while the number of homeless veterans rose from 550 to more than 700. Confucius noted: “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” Which are we?

We want to avoid what Marvin Olasky calls “the tragedy of American compassion,” hurting people by helping them without changing the conditions that hurt them. At the same time, we must care about those we intend to help. Mother Teresa was right, as usual: “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.”

Jesus came “to proclaim good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). Will we join him?

“Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” These words, written just over fifty years ago from a Birmingham jail, remain true today. I recall these words of Dr. King in light of the story out of Fort Lauderdale of Arnold Abbott, arrested now multiple times for conspicuously feeding homeless people in a local park in violation of city ordinance. Of course, measures similar to this one are nothing new. Organizations such as the National Coalition for the Homeless have kept track of laws like these going back decades.

A characteristic of modern development is we don’t like to see the underside, the losers, victims, nor the prophets in our economy. Visit downtown Southlake some day and take note of what you don’t see—poor people and churches. This is how we build our beautiful cities today.

So can a man feeding homeless people out in the open be told to stop because of business interests and tourism? Since Abbot is acting upon his faith, does this law infringe upon his religious freedom? For the Catholic Church, religious liberty is a sacred right but not an unlimited one. There are “due limits” to religious freedom which civil authorities may apply with prudence. However, the “moral legitimacy” of any authority presupposes such things as “respect for the human person.” Likewise, so the Church believes, when civil authorities fail to respect this or any other principle of justice, Christians must “remind” them of the inalienable rights of human beings—rights which naturally are prior to any civil authority.

And this brings us back to the words of Dr. King. Does this ordinance in Fort Lauderdale degrade our fellow human beings? Although we bailed out huge banks with little to blush about, it seems feeding the homeless where people can see it is just too much for society to tolerate. That this ordinance and others like it are plainly inhumane seems clear—at least to the morally developed. Whether or not this infringes upon Mr. Abbott’s religious freedom is, frankly, a secondary matter—although this too seems clear. When Dr. King wrote his letter from jail, he didn’t talk at all about his rights. Rather, he talked about justice, the moral law, and about the goodness of going to jail again and again (like Mr. Abbott), all because, as he said, “right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”

As people of faith, we must not succumb to what the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre called the “mock rationality” of contemporary public debate. Instead we should simply do what Mr. Abbott is doing. We should obey deeper laws, even if it means going to jail repeatedly. Constitutional questions are for lawyers. For the rest of us, our job is to love—no matter the consequences.

But this brings me to a more painful and embarrassing question far more disconcerting than whether or not Mr. Abbott’s rights have been violated. And that is why aren’t there more people like Arnold Abbott going to jail? This is the more serious and damning question. Dr. King asked this question too—himself wondering why the jails weren’t more full. He said, “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.” This seems the more sobering reflection for people of faith. Let’s not let legal questions get in the way of love. Rather, let’s let love get in the way of legal questions.

As has been said in the above, no freedom is absolute. Many individual freedoms are “infringed” upon by the constraints of the social contract under which we live. It sounds like alternative locations were offered that did not seem unreasonable. Could it be that they were not accepted because of ego and territoriality? Were some offended because they couldn’t continue to help in places where they always had? Was it really their devotion to feeding the homeless that caused them to scream foul?

I don’t think this is the same issues that have been raised before regarding ministers’ sermons and the expression of religion in public schools. The former involves the question of tax exempt status of churches as apolitical institutions, and the latter involves the intimidation of the minority believers or disbelievers and the imposition of the majority’s belief.

It seems to me that some reasonable accommodation could be worked out between the opposing sides on the location of feeding the homeless without hindering this worthwhile cause. If you listen closely, you might hear heels digging in at the expense of the homeless.

Fort Lauderdale’s ban on feeding the homeless in a public place isn’t an infringement on religious rights. It’s an infringement on compassion, a quality that makes us humans rather than just chatty mammals in clothes. Love Thy Neighbor takes its cue from Christianity, but the group has now been joined by representatives from other area religions. For to Jesus, as well as Mohamed, Buddha, Lao Tze and other religious founders, requiring the poor to follow difficult demands in order to receive love would be against their faith.

However, I’d like to ask: Where are my rights before the courts? I have no religious affiliation for which to claim special dispensation. I belong to the 20% of “nones.” That’s one out of five people. Think about that next time you walk down a city street. One out of five has no recourse at all in using our humane and spiritual values to influence policy via the courts.

If the spiritual-not- religious spectrum — which ranges from agnostic to deist to mystic — could appeal legally, many would say something like this:

Our country was founded on inalienable human rights. Not tourist rights, not business rights, not even municipal rights. Human rights.

Stop thinking so small. Look at centuries prior, when brutality was common and ruling civilized kings would line their boulevards with beheaded captives of plunder wars. Then look well past the horizon and see the future discoveries in quantum physics that make time irrelevant and the creative endeavors that soar the human spirit beyond its potential. Holding fast to such a perspective — that we are able to overcome our past and go on to imagine the impossible — then feeding the hungry without a ruckus should be easy.

The city ban on feeding the homeless in public places is motivated by business politics rather than needs of the community.

The mayor of Fort Lauderdale is assuming that the homeless are not a part of the community, and have no say in the community affairs as they do not contribute towards the revenue of the city. He is also influenced by a few uncompassionate members of the business community as the presence of homeless people around their shops is ‘apparently’ hurting their business.

Since when have we started valuing individuals based on their contribution to the revenues of a city? That attitude renders nearly 15% of poor Americans valueless. Since when have we quit valuing our elderly with Alzheimer’s or kids with severe handicaps, or the homeless veterans?

Whether homelessness is a choice or not, they are a part of our communities and we have a responsibility for their safety and well being. Public safety is a prime responsibility of the elected we choose for governance.

The ordinance banning men and women from serving the homeless, out of their religious conviction amounts to infringement on their religious freedom and the ban needs to be challenged. The city cannot establish or ban a religion from doing public good. I believe the Becket funding takes up these cases. I sure will do my share of passing the information to them.

There is a way out. The city ought to withdraw the ordinance and consider forging or facilitating partnerships between the business community and those who want to serve the homeless, and serve them healthy food as a requirement for public safety.

Shame on us, we give away $48 billion dollars a year in military assistance to other nations for killing each other, and we cannot spend 1/100th of that on our homeless?

Those of us who are callous, ought to re-look in to the idea of human development, by investing in pulling people from ditches on to a level playing field, we would be enlarging our consumer base, boosting business all around. Pope Francis is indeed setting examples after examples – the latest news is he is building showers for the homeless in the square.

Caliph Omar was known for justice, and he forgave a thief against the norms of the society at that time. Instead, he took the responsibility and declared that the society ought to be ashamed, that a man was humiliated to stealing food for his sick child. We have to take care of our fellow beings no matter who they are. As a society we have to figure out a better system to take care of the hungry.

LARRY BETHUNE: Senior Pastor, University Baptist Church, Austin

“Send them away” the disciples beg Jesus in the gospel when faced with 5,000 hungry people. And the desire to make the hungry poor disappear has not left the well fed. They trouble our conscience, call for our resources, show us how stingy we are.

In Florida the politicians and the businesses that own them and the citizens who comply with their wishes have shown their hardhearted character by chasing a program feeding the hungry among them, whom they prefer to remain invisible. They deserve the negative attention their actions have received. But the hungry poor are citizens, too, as are the people trying to help. And Ft. Lauderdale is not the only place in our nation that discourages programs feeding the hungry.

On the other hand, it is the role of government to set appropriate boundaries for the use of public spaces to make them safe and useful for all citizens. The control and restriction of activities in a city park is the responsibility of elected officials, and citizens of all kinds – compassionate or hardhearted – should obey the law.

When a law is unjust, prophetic communities may choose civil disobedience to demonstrate the injustice. But they must expect to suffer the consequences as part of that demonstration.

Better for everyone would be a creative cooperation among businesses, politicians, citizens, and ministry leaders to provide a place and give support to a program feeding the hungry among them. But this would require compassion, generosity, and the will of these parties to seek the common good. And that would be a city worth visiting.

“Send them away,” the disciples beg Jesus when faced with the hungry poor. And Jesus replies: “You feed them.”

Every body needs a head. So similarly, every society needs saintly intellectuals for guidance. Leadership without such guidance is like a body without a head. Leadership is like the arms of the social body which provides protection and business class is like the belly which facilitates the distribution of goods. All parts of the body are important but the head is the most important for it is the head of body that provides intelligence.

Intelligence means the ability to accommodate and manage two opposing values. It also means the ability to discriminate that which is śreyas, of long term substantial benefit, and preyas, immediate or short term gratification. The short term benefit of commerce is important but it is considered shallow in comparison to charity which can have long lasting or even eternal benefits.

Krishna states that charity, when done properly, even purifies great souls. To completely ban charitable distribution of food in relation to the value of commerce is sign of the lack of saintly intelligent guidance among our leaders.

Summer is the season of blockbusters (and not-so-blockbusters) on the big screen, so this week, let’s go to the movies. Nobody can doubt Hollywood’s love of money, and some recent faith-based films have attracted big audiences — Son of God, Heaven Is for Real and God’s Not Dead.

Religious movies have come in various forms, big and small. The old Cecil B. DeMille extravaganzas were clearly mainstream, as was Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. Darren Aronofsky’s Noah starring Russell Crowe in the title role was controversial, but big-budget fare.

A little movie like Jesus of Montreal in which a theater group puts on an unorthodox, but acclaimed Passion Play sparking opposition from the Catholic church, has a devoted following.

And religious films don’t have to be “religious.” No doubt many movies without an explicit religious subject express faith-based themes: community, morality, values and purpose.

So in the spirit of summer, we’re asked our Texas Faith panel of experts this question: What’s your favorite – or most memorable – religious movie? And why?

The answers were as varied as our panel of theologians, clergy, scholars and faith-based leaders. From Ten Commandments to the Shawshack Redemption to Places in the Heart to the 1928 classic The Passion of Joan of Arc (my personal favorite) to The Incredible Shrinking Man. And more. Break out the popcorn, here are the picks of our Texas Faith panel.

DEAL HUDSON, President, Morley Institute for Church and Culture

The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc), a 1928 silent, French film based upon the trial of Joan of Arc – there is a court record — was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer who cast a cabaret singer, Renée Jeanne Falconetti, as the persecuted and executed saint. Dreyer himself was a Danish Protestant but was invited to France to make a film about France’s favorite saint. The set itself was based upon medieval architecture and has a stark, monochromatic look against which St. Joan’s anguished face and burning eyes stand out. None of the actors wore make-up. There is no film of which I am aware, except for Robert Bresson’s The Diary of a Country Priest (1951) that succeeds in capturing the Holy Spirit on celluloid.

JOE CLIFFORD, Head of Staff and Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church of Dallas

My favorite religious movie is not an overtly religious movie. It is The Shawshank Redemption, adapted from a short story written by Stephen King. It tells the story of Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, a man wrongly accused for the murder of his wife and her lover who winds up in one of the toughest prisons in Maine. Underneath the main plot run themes intersecting with the deepest human longings and emotions.

As the film unfolds questions of sin and guilt emerge, illumined by Andy’s innocence, the institution’s evil, systemic sin, and the reality that no one is really without guilt in this world. The most sinful in the film hide behind the thin veil of hypocritical faith. Yet amidst the cold grey granite and seemingly unconquerable injustice of the system, the film offers glimpses of hope. It evolves through Andy’s friend, Red, played by Morgan Freeman. Early in the film he rebukes Andy for hoping, saying, “Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” Nearing the close of the movie, Andy offers his response, “Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

By the close of the movie, an aging Red muses as he makes his way to freedom: “I find I’m so excited that I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at a start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.” That line brings tears to my eyes every time.

Ultimately the film is about redemption and salvation, understood as freedom from sin, evil and death. This redemption comes through the cross of Shawshank Prison, and the resurrection made possible by Andy’s escape. I have seen that film more times than I can count, and yet it opens new thinking for me every time I watch it. Unfortunately its “R-rating” is necessary due to language and graphic scenes of prison violence, but the edited version that plays on regular television doesn’t materially impact the film.

WILLIAM MCKENZIE, co-founder of the Texas Faith blog, editorial director at the George W. Bush Institute

The most powerful scene in any movie that I have watched, religious or otherwise, comes from Places in the Heart. The power of reconciliation is what makes the movie’s final scene so powerful.

The film is set near Waxahachie in the time of the Depression. The head of a family, the local sheriff, is accidentally shot by a young black male. Reflecting the racist-tinged vigilantism that characterized the Klan of the day, some townspeople take justice into their own hands, dragging the young male through the town behind a truck.

The death also resulted in the sheriff’s widow, a blind tenant and a black farmhand being forced to figure out how to keep the family farm alive. This being the Depression, they must do so amidst depravation, drought and despair. They come together, but only through many hardships.

At the end, a figurative scene takes place in the country church in the community. Communion is served after a minister reads from 1st Corinthians. Slowly, as a choir sings, communion bread and cups are passed row after row, person after person. Eventually, they move from the hands of the widow to her deceased husband who turns and symbolically hands them to the young man who killed him. The teen, in turn, says “Peace of God” as the movie closes.

Some critics have dismissed this finale as too dreamy and disjointed from the movie itself. To me, it recalls the real-life example of Pope John Paul going to the jail cell of his assassin. As with that moment, the film’s imagery speaks to the love that breaks down walls.

Like many Christians, I believe in heaven. Yet I don’t spend that much time thinking about it. When I do, I think of reconciliation. Divided parts of the human family are made whole. Fractured nuclear families are reunited. Individuals torn apart by their troubled souls are made one.

That’s the heavenly image in my mind, one that Places in the Heart so powerfully captures.

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

It would be inaccurate to say that I have a favorite religious movie. But there are a few religious films that are memorable for me. One is Jesus of Nazareth, which actually appeared as a television mini series before it became available in wider release. It was the first and finest effort to portray a truly human Jesus with spiritual power but without unnecessary melodrama or gratuitous violence.

Another is Witness, an imperfect film at best, but one that showed the dramatically difficult interactions between the Amish and a conventional set of American values. In an odd way, the story of an Amish boy who was a witness to the murder of a man while he and his family were on a brief sojourn into the world of the “English” provided plot lines to exhibit the exceptional differences between the violence that most Americans accept as reality and the non-violent religious commitments of the Amish.

Still another memorable religious film is the one produced in the 1950′s by Cecil B. DeMille that actually was his second Ten Commandments film to be released. Careful research has shown that this one actually viewed the story of Pharaoh’s tyranny through perspectives of anti-communist views in America. Yet another is Raiders of the Lost Ark, which uses legends and lore about the Ark of the Covenant to discuss the political evils of the Nazis.

The truly fine religious films are the ones that explore the questions that religions raise (Witness), while the films that purport to be religious (The Ten Commandments) actually become advocates of primarily non-religious issues.

Religion does not readily yield its mysteries to filmed explanation. It is best communicated orally, poetically, in media that respect both the doubt and the dedication that are essential to the mysteries of spirituality. In short, if one wants to encounter a religious theme, listen to a story like Jesus’ parables or ponder a great work of art like Da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” Neither purports to answer all questions, but invites viewers and listeners to encounter the mysterious truth of God.

AMY MARTIN, director emeritus, Earth Rhythms; writer, Moonlady Media

I was about 10 when The Incredible Shrinking Man began to air on television. It seemed like typical ‘50s science fiction fare until the final three-minute monologue by Robert Carey, the shrinking man (played by Grant Williams). Dwindled to a flea-sized speck able to slip between the wires of a window screen, he leaves the basement where he’d become trapped and stands in the moonlight.

“I was continuing to shrink, to become, what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being?… So close – the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept… I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God’s silver tapestry spread across the night… I had thought in terms of man’s own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends in man’s conception, not nature’s. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance.”

This heady message shot straight into me. Even at that age, I knew that Christian as misrepresented by my family was not for me. Here was a seed of salvation, the very beginning of a nature and science based spirituality that would nurture me for the rest of my life. There was a sense of validation — others out there thought like me. But on the main, I was struck by the aloneness of the shrinking man. Ultimately we enter and leave this world alone. If the shrinking man could face the infinite universe and offer himself openly to it, then I could, too.

My favorite religious movie is Tukuram. Tukaram won an International Film Award in 1937 in Venice. It depicts the extraordinary life and teachings of the 16th century saint Tukaram. Saint Tukaram taught through his poetry, lectures, and example that the path of Bhakti yoga, loving service to God, is the most sublime, inclusive, and blissful path in approaching the Supreme. Bhakti goes beyond sectarian lines of caste, creed, religion, nationality and so on. The main form of Bhakti that Tukaram taught was kirtan, the singing/chanting of the Holy Names of God.

Previously less than 100 years ago in India all entertainment was based on sacred literature and drama. Thus even a child or one who is illiterate could gain great spiritual wisdom simply through entertainment. Nowadays media is steeped in the bodily concept of life thus furthering everyone illusion that the self is this temporary material body. Such media can never bring real joy and happiness because it fails to touch the soul.

Any movie that depicts the ideals and teachings of a religion, tells a story about historic religious personalities, God or its prophets can broadly be classified as a religious movie.

The following are my favorite religious movies; The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Passion of the Christ, The Bible, Son of God, Mahabharat, Leap of faith, Water, and Muhammad, the legacy of a prophet.

Last year, when Pastor Jones announced that he was going to burn 2998 copies of Quran, one for each American killed. I said no to that, that is not the way to honor our martyrs, and instead we took Dallas’10th annual Unity day program to Mulberry, Florida, to pray for them, as well as pray for Pastor Jones.

Indeed, it was a unifying event that brought people of many faiths together to offer prayers and rededicate our pledge for the safety, security and prosperity of America. Special Muslim prayers were added for the victims and donated blood at the event to save lives.

Cecil B. DeMille, Griffith, Gibson and others have made great classics like Quo Vadis, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Godspell, Intolerance and Passion of the Christ, and Americans Together will convert that rich experience into the film, “Flames of Passion” (www.FlamesofPassion.net ). It will be shot in Dallas, Texas, Mulberry, Florida, Washington DC, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and possibly Indonesia for a world wide release in March 2015.

The Film is based on a successful real life event about ordinary people of Dallas and Mulberry bringing extraordinary changes. It is a story about skillfully managing conflicting issues of safety of Americans overseas, upholding freedom of speech, improving perceptions about Islam and preserving sanctity of religions.

The film is woven around human emotions generated by such events with fear, apprehension; thrill seeking, suspense, drama, romance, disappointment and the role of justice during the attempted Quran burning event.

It is an epitome of nonviolent conflict mitigation and goodwill nurturance based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Hopefully the world will see a new paradigm in making; what Muslims ought to be, and how they will respond to future incidents of Quran Burning, criticism of Islam, and cartoons of the Prophet. It will be good for Muslims and good for the world. Indeed, blessed are the peacemakers.

Not sure I can pick one. I enjoy The Ten Commandments because of its scale and the sense it gives of the events of the Exodus. Passion of the Christ was powerful because the very strangeness of how it was done (with Aramaic and subtitles), as well as the somber subject matter rather vividly portrayed made it a very reflective experience. Both movies do gap filling in terms of the Bible’s story line, but the effort of both is to communicate the core drama and tension involved in the accounts.

For two-and-a-half years, the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel debated. These said, “It is better for man not to have been created than to have been created”; and those said, “It is better for man to have been created than not to have been created.” – Talmud, Eruvin 13b

Anyone who is familiar with this famous Talmudic debate, and the others like it that appear in the Midrash, will upon seeing it immediately recognize that the Darren Aronofsky film, Noah, in all its weird, wild, wonderfulness, is the most “Jewish” movie based on the Bible ever made. Is it flawed? For sure. But it’s also a) remarkably faithful to the Bible, b) deeply grounded in Jewish interpretations of the Bible, and c) IMHO, the greatest “Bible movie,” ever. Let me make my case:

Fidelity to the Bible – Aronofsky’s first move is to sweep away all the accreted pabulum we intuitively associate with the Noah story resulting from a century of “children’s Bibles,” nursery room decorations, and that inane “arky, arky” camp song. The Biblical story is stark, brutal, and cheerless. It’s the first tale of apocalyptic terror. It’s also jarringly brief and lacking in details: no dialogue, character development, plot complications, or explanation for the many, many opaque features.

To solve these problem the Noah writers basically compress the first half of Genesis into Noah. They quote from other parts of the Bible. Aronofsky’s Noah presages Abraham; he is a fearful wanderer in what should be a land of promise. The type-theme of bareness precipitating a family crisis, and miraculous fertility (Gen. 14-21) provides the movie’s key sub-plot. And the wrenching and pivotal confrontation in the second act, where Abrah…I mean Noah…, pious and loyal to a fault, tries to kill his own progeny because he thinks that’s what God is asking of him, is perhaps the best cinematic “take” on the Akedah (Gen. 22) ever filmed. And as for the much-maligned “environmental” theme, it’s still authentic to the fundamental issue which drives the Bible narrative – man is irredeemably violent and corrupt. In Noah, humanity is violent and corrupting of the earth as well as itself, a tweak which actually adds plausibility to God’s decision to wash it all away! The aversion people feel toward this film adaption is, in fact, it’s too biblically authentic.

Jews read the Bible “expansively,” and we have been filling in the “gaps” and elisions of the Written Torah for two thousand years. Noah uses Jewish tradition a lot. Let’s review the Jewish “takes” on Genesis:

· The “Watchers.” They are right there in Gen. 6:4; the “fallen angels” theme comes from the extra-canonical Jewish books, Enoch, Jubilees, and Book of Giants.

· The glowing-explosive “zohar” everyone craves also has a linguistic basis in tzohar (6:16), which Jewish Midrash interprets as a wondrous, multi-purpose glowing stone.

· The flaming sword wielded by Methuselah is mentioned both in the Bible (3:24) and Midrash (Midrash Akbir).

· Even the tefillin-like shaman-skin of the Sethites has a basis in both Bible and Jewish commentaries (Gen. 3:21; Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer 14; 20).

· Tubal-Cain is the film’s answer to the Bible’s silence on how the rest of the world reacted to the flood. He is also a conflation of two characters from Jewish folklore about Genesis: King Nimrod and, especially, King Og, an antediluvian giant who clung to ark and so survived the flood (Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer 23).

So, the greatest “Biblical movie” ever? – Yes. Aronofsky gives us his authentic interpretation, like RaSHI or Maimonides. It’s his version and vision of the story. It’s not a product; he makes no concessions to the expectations or prejudices of his audience. The film is, in that sense, very much like the Bible itself, which when read without doctrinal “lens” or child-conditioned pre-conceptions, is rough, raw, and surpassingly weird. It is, in short, a brilliant biblical midrash, rooted in tradition, yet wholly contemporary in its relevance. It belongs on the short list – I would include only The Last Temptation of Christ, A Serious Man, and The Passion on that list – of truly compelling biblical movies. I would put it at the top of that list.

ALBERT REYES, President and CEO, Buckner International, Dallas

Going to the movies is one of my favorite pastime activities I enjoy with my wife, Belinda. I would have to say that my all-time favorite religious movie is The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson. However, I saw this movie with a pastor friend of mine rather than my wife. It was sort of a guy thing for us.

I enjoyed this movie the most because it appeared to be faithful to the biblical text of the passion of Jesus. Gibson showed the reality of life influenced by evil in contrast to the life-giving approach of Jesus. I appreciated the struggle Pontius Pilate had with the concept of truth. Many people struggle in the same way today. While difficult to watch, I appreciated the brutality of the punishment afflicted on Jesus before and during the crucifixion. It helped me reach into the depth of the sacrifice he made and the sheer degradation of the human condition. It helped me see the raw need humanity has for a better way to live life on the planet. It helped me understand how religious people can often be wrong, well intentioned but off base. The movie does a good job of demonstrating the humanity and divinity of Jesus as both God and man at the same time.

I almost selected a non-religious movie as my favorite religious movie. Why? Because I often see the themes of ethics, morality, the struggle between good and evil, and the presence of a Jesus figure in most movies I watch. Movies like Amazing Grace; Twelve Years A Slave; The Patriot; BraveHeart; Geronimo; Slumdog Millionaire among others all have a spiritual theme; an ethical; moral dilemma; and in most cases a Jesus-shaped character who does what is right; acts in redemptive ways; and does unto others as he would have them do unto him. The Jesus paradigm provides hope that we can be better than we are. Throughout my ministry I have never found a way to make a better person without the presence of Jesus.

My favorite religious movie is Friendly Persuasion, the 1956 movie staring Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire. It’s the story of a Quaker family during the Civil War, and the struggles of each family member to remain faithful to the Quaker teaching of pacifism.

It is based on the 1945 novel The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West. I didn’t see the movie or read the novel until I was in high school in the mid-1960s, so perhaps that explains the impact it had on me. I was old enough then to better understand the pressures that can be brought to bear by peers, by neighbors, by community expectations, and to grasp the courage it takes to remain faithful to one’s beliefs in the face of that pressure. I also was intrigued by the idea of a female minister.

In the novel and in the movie Eliza Birdwell is a Quaker minister, and her steadfast belief in pacifism, especially in the face of her husband Jess’s wavering, impressed me greatly. Not only was she standing up to the community pressure, she was standing up quietly and lovingly to her husband. She was clearly willing to risk her marriage for the sake of her beliefs. This image of a strong female character was — and remains — rare in novels, and even rarer in the movies. I soon had devoured all of West’s novels that I could find, reveling in the many strong female characters in her books.

Eliza Birdwell’s strength and faith undergird the novel, but Jess Birdwell’s struggle to come to terms with the Civil War dominated the movie. The book and the film turn on the question — is it ever right for a Christian to engage in violence? This question was looming every larger, not only in my life in the late 1960s, but in the life of the nation as young people began to push back against our nation’s growing involvement in the Vietnam War. I found the arguments expressed the book and the movie — both pro and con pacifism – pushed me to look for more, to read and study more about the question, to probe deeper into my own faith.

Any movie that can do that for a teen-ager is a good movie, in my estimation.

My favorite religious movie is Chariots of Fire. I think I liked it, as a teenager, because it helped me imagine what it would look like to stand up, publicly, as a person of faith. The idea that the protagonist (Eric Liddell) would forfeit running in the Olympics in order to honor the Christian Sabbath pushed me to self-examination: Would I be willing to make such a huge sacrifice, in support of what I believe? This is a good question for any person of faith to ask herself periodically, I think. Last summer I came up against it again when I discovered that many of the Laotian students in a course I was teaching had, at one point or another, been imprisoned for calling themselves Christians.

“I don’t know if I would be able to stand firm in my faith if it meant going to prison,” I told them, honestly.

“Oh, you would if you had to,” they said, with a kind of certainty I hope I never have opportunity to understand.

Because Chariots of Fire ends with Liddell being given a chance to run on a Thursday, and especially because he winds up winning the Olympics, I gained the sense (as a teenager) that sacrifices would be rewarded. I could be admired for my integrity and still win whatever race I was destined to win. What a deal!

Watching the film again in my adulthood, it is joltingly clear Liddell offers his sacrifice with no expectation there will be a ram in the bush. He does what he believes is most honorable to God; plain and simple. And what he sacrifices is not only a possible Olympic win. To NOT run the race is to sacrifice his very self, as a runner made to run. It is not the potential winning that is his greatest sacrifice, then; it is the actual running.

So now the question the movie provokes for me is: How do I choose between two conflicting behaviors when each of them is utterly true to who I am? Liddell chose the universal over the particular claim made on him; the “remember the Sabbath day” over “a runner runs.” But could he not have chosen, rather, to run – remembering Jesus’ words that “Sabbath is made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath”? This is the same kind of choice also made by the protagonist in my favorite novel, “My Name is Asher Lev” (Chaim Potok). Asher Lev is an Hassidic Jewish boy who draws and paints despite the fact that such artistic work violates Hassidic laws against making graven images.

The question I’m reflecting on these days – inspired by “Chariots of Fire” and “My Name Is Asher Lev” – is what it looks like to make whatever difficult choice is necessary and then hold tenaciously to the beloved community that threatens to disassociate us because of that choice. Eric Liddell keeps on with the runners who want to shake him off. Asher Lev keeps worshipping with the Jews who think him an idolater. Both men respect those who have formed them enough to stay connected to their communities, even when they are misunderstood.

JIM DENISON, President, Denison Forum on Truth and Culture

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

I think Elizabeth Barrett Browning could say of movies what she said of bushes. If a movie deals at all with life, death, hope, fear, triumph, failure, past, present, or future, it deals with a “religious” theme. For instance, I recently saw Begin Again and witnessed a deeply spiritual struggle to find purpose through the expression of one’s gifts, though God was never mentioned (except in repetitive profanity).

That said, my favorite “religious” movie (in the traditional sense) would have to be Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce’s fight to end slavery in England. The film tells a transformational story honestly, depicting Wilberforce’s deep doubts, genuine fears, and repetitive failures. His victory is proof not of what one person can do but of what Jesus can do with one person.

I was recently at Oxford University, where I attended Evensong at Christ Church. The vicar’s sermon focused on “doubting Thomas” and made this remarkable point: the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. When we are sure of something, we no longer need faith. So long as we need faith, we should expect doubt.

So it was with Wilberforce—God’s amazing grace could use a doubting man of faith. That’s a message for us all.

The military crisis in Iraq is typically described in religious terms – a millennia-old conflict between Sunni and Shia. No doubt the sectarian divide has fueled tensions and defined the war. It has given critics ammunition to argue against sending more troops into a religious civil war. There is an emerging view that we should just stay out and let the parties fight it out themselves, as they have done for hundreds of years.

Todd Slater

For some, it’s hard not to blame religion. Religion is often in the frame of modern conflicts. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict predated the creation of the modern state of Israel. The civil war in Ireland pitted Catholics against Protestants. Religious tensions in Nigeria divide the country between the Muslim north and the Christian south. Hindus and Muslims oppose each other in South Asia. The conflicts in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo involve Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim followers.

Religion seems to be connected with violence virtually everywhere. Critics of religion are quick to put the blame on religion. Advocates of faith counter with religion’s record as a force for peace. One 18th century writer said we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

As people of faith, how to we talk with those who say religion is to blame? How do we respond when someone asks if religion has succeeded in any of its efforts to unite mankind?

When a critic points to conflicts in Iraq, across the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe and says religion is to blame – how do we respond?

JIM DENISON, President, Denison Forum on Truth and Culture

Richard Dawkins calls religion “the root of all evil.” However, there are five fallacies in his claim.

One: there is no such thing as “religion,” only religions whose beliefs diverge widely. Moderate Muslims reject violence in the name of Islam. Terry Jones and I are both Christians, but I deplore his burnings of the Qur’an. To blame all religion for the crimes of one is like blaming all Americans for Adam Lanza.

Two: evil acts are not confined to religion. The 20th Century was the bloodiest in human history, but each of its major wars was fought for political reasons, none of them religious in motivation. Are we therefore to abolish all politics?

Three: religion is not to blame for its misuse. Religious texts can obviously be misinterpreted, but so can medical texts. In the first half of the 20th century, 89 million people were killed by officially atheistic governments in the U.S.S.R., China, North Korea and Cambodia. Are we to blame all atheists?

Four: Violence is done in the name of religion, but much violence is done to religious people as well. Since the time of Christ, 70 million have died for following him. Terrorist attacks against Christians have escalated 309 percent between 2003 and 2010.

Five: religion is responsible for much good. According to U.S. News and World Report, “there is overwhelming research evidence that people can live longer if they actively engage in formal religious activities and follow their faith’s behavioral prescriptions.”

In Richard Dawkins’s universe, there would be no Martin Luther King, Jr., no Mother Teresa, Mozart, Bach, Rubens, Red Cross, St. Francis, or Jesus. Would this be a less dangerous or more dangerous world?

Religion is used in such claims as a generic term, a generalization, when in fact many factors are at play such as nationality or ethnicity, which often are as important in driving and controlling the religious dimension. In fact, it is the quest for power and sin that drive our tendency to fight. That is not about God and religion, but about our own hearts.

Even secular governments fight wars. Religion can become a means for justifying war, however. Also important is to look at how religion is presented and applied to such a question in the particular conflict being discussed. This is an important distinction in the claim of the statement. Some expressions of religion justify the use of power and war without any qualification. Then religion can fuel war. Others are much more circumspect or argue for the priority of peace when possible. Not all religion is made the same. Those distinct approaches to religion call for distinguishing what type of faith and religion we are appealing to when we say religion is to blame for war.

WILLIAM MCKENZIE, a co-founder of the Texas Faith blog, editorial director at the George W. Bush Institute

Religion undoubtedly can be a destabilizing force, but that is not necessarily bad.

Think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The movement he led deconstructed our nation’s once-warped views about equality. That church-led revolution led to a reconstruction of our understanding of what it means to be an American. The civil rights era was a destabilizing moment in our national life, but we needed to go through it to get to a better place.

The same was true for England during its debate over slavery. The evangelical lawmaker William Wilberforce set out to abolish slavery, his conscience being awakened to the horrors of the practice. This didn’t go over so well in England, but he persevered and the nation changed for the better.

As far as Christianity goes, Jesus himself was a revolutionary force. We sometimes suffer from the idea of Jesus being a warm-and-fuzzy figure, spewing kindly homilies as he went his way. Indeed, he preached a gospel of loving one’s neighbor, but the paths his followers went down often put them in direct conflict with the world.

I point this out to emphasize that religion often has a provocative nature. But that doesn’t mean it must become a negative force, which is what we see when some use it to oppress others or coerce certain behaviors.

When that happens in the international arena, my hunch is quite a few of those claiming a religious agenda actually are pursuing political power. Douglas Johnston of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy made that point during a recent interview. And I think he is right.

In short, some may co-opt a religion for their own purposes, limiting the freedom of others. It is up to those of us who are believers to stand against that kind of perversion.

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

Let’s not limit the discussion to matters of military conflict or to regions that are exotic and distant. It is true that religion has been cited as a foundational issue for the current fighting in Iraq, the long standing “troubles” in Northern Ireland, the civil war in Sudan, and dreadful slaughter in Syria. But religion was also at the foundation of what became an assault on the Branch Davidians in Waco more than twenty years ago. Religious differences were among the forces that prompted Scott Roeder to assassinate Dr. George Tiller in a Lutheran Church just before Sunday morning worship. And, although there is no immediate evidence of military action or violent behavior in the public schools of Texas about it, religious differences have propelled the immense debate over teaching evolution. So we have plenty of local and regional examples of the role of religion in serious conflicts.

In a few situations, religion really is the divisive issue. One could argue that the Crusades in the middle ages were simply the militaristic efforts by Christians to retake the Holy Land from Muslims who had previously taken it. One could argue that Martin Luther’s pleadings against “the murdering hordes of peasants” were an effort to eliminate what he saw as a corruption of Christian theology. One could interpret the Inquisition, in which the Church used torture and execution in an effort to rid the world of heretics, as strictly a feud over religious matters. One could argue that America’s persecution of the Mormons in the nineteenth century was nothing more than a religious dispute.

But the more typical pattern is to create a strategy that builds momentum for a political agenda and by hijacking religious feelings, commitments, attachments, practices, energies, and emotions. Then religion is merely a resource for political action.

Hitler found a way to exploit the Protestant religious establishment, which carried a residue of anti-Semitism, thereby attaching religious systems to a philosophy that became an effort to exterminate Jews. American slaveholders found a way to exploit methods of Biblical interpretation and turn them into justifications for the practices, the violence, the sexual assaults, the murder, and the oppression that characterized our nation’s history of slavery.

In most cases, religion gets used as a tool by the most unscrupulous pursuers of power. Some of those who pursue power are so lacking in scruples that they feel free to appear religious or feel free to claim religious motivations when they are doing nothing for the cause of religion. They may, like Mr. Roeder, even commit murder in the name of God. That makes them not only violators of the Sixth Commandment, the one against killing. It also makes them violators of the Third Commandment, for they are taking the name of the Lord in vain.

Suggesting that religion is to blame for the violent conflicts is a superficial understanding of the history of those conflicts. Of course religion has played a role but only in the sense that religious differences become a convenient hook upon which to hang our human failings in living up to the tenets of the faiths that are being blamed. The conflicts cited above, as were all the conflicts in western history, take place and continue to take place for economic, political, and social reasons with religion acting as a patina that masks the deeper reasons for the horrific conflicts. These wars are always economic and geopolitical conflicts, waged by people seeking economic, political, and territorial power, not because they are doing their Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu duty. In fact, as they rampage and murder while screaming the tenets of their faiths, they violate the very core beliefs of those faiths. These wars are not the failure of the respective religions but a failure of people to live up to their faiths’ demands.

While many of these seemingly religious conflicts are more about land grabs, fights over resources, and conflicting claims of royal lineage, one thing underlies them all: the need to be right. But what does being right get you besides rivers of blood? In the perspective of eternity, which is where the divine lies, the answer is not much at all. It’s hard for millions to understand a God that condones dehumanizing and killing in its name. And that, sadly, turns them away from any spiritual path at all—a huge loss to humanity.

Yet the most profound of theologians and philosophers will maintain that there can be more than one right answer. They reject hubris and embrace humility, they accept that we are all trying to understand the ineffable the best we can. Having seen via science the scope of the universe, which continues to unfold and expand beyond comprehension, the divine must be so immense our brains are incapable of grasping but a mere fragment. Glimpses are all we have and glimpses are as accurate as a blind man trying to describe an elephant while only being able to touch its trunk.

Perhaps the Age of Belief bound by books is waning and the Age of Experience dawns. It is time to redefine religion not as a set of beliefs entwined with land and history that are cherry-picked from sacred texts, but as a search for the same question whose answer lies beyond the Earth. Once we find faith in the absence of belief, the result will be a peace enabling us to coexist on this amazing, fragile planet we call Earth.

DANIEL KANTER, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas

Behind some of the wars in history have been governments manipulating people of faith ideologically to support invasions and civil war. It is true that religion has never united humankind. It is also true that no empire or human institution has united humanity. Each have equal shares of promoting violence and peace. And each have promoted policy that challenge or uphold prejudiced as well as attempts at equality.

So the difference has been when empires and governments have used religion to ignite war. While it is true that religion has challenged us to overcome our differences it has also been used by imperialistic thinking that has challenged us to do what we know is right which is to love more than hate. Our great test as people of faith is not only to know the core lessons of our religions that point to the promotion of unity and to not be used by power brokers and promoters of violence.

“Religion” as such is neutral. It is neither inherently “good” nor inherently “bad.” It depends on what it is used for. And what it is used for depends on whether it is centered in the power of people who are trying to promote themselves, or centered in the power of a God who loves and serves others.

Certainly, religion has been used to fund injustice and to foster life-damaging violence. Religion is to blame, at least in large degree, for many of the conflicts mentioned in the question posed, today. In relation to these instances, “religious” people like myself should take responsibility even for that which we are not directly responsible. We should repent of the ways what we believe have been used to harm rather than to heal. We should clearly and actively condemn the crimes committed in the names of the God we worship.

And we should demonstrate the ways religion can be used to foster life. John Calvin once made the distinction between “false” and “true” religion. False religion is religion oriented around lords of our own making; religion dominated by empty rituals that serve mainly to celebrate and increase the power of those who are already powerful. True religion is religion that has, at its center, the only true Lord. In the Christian understanding, this is the Lord we know in Jesus Christ, the Lord who demonstrates power by emptying himself of it. The Lord who shows us what true power is by entering into existence with creatures and dying with and for them, eschewing violence even for the purpose of self defense.

I, a religious person, believe true religion will overcome false religion. I believe this is the hope we confess when we demand, in the Lord’s Prayer, that God’s Kingdom come “on earth as it is in heaven.” We have seen God’s Kingdom break into history, at least here and there. A hundred and fifty years ago, the Lord in whom there is no “slave nor free” overran the false religion of the slave lords. In 1934, confessing churches in Germany renounced the false religion of the national church by reminding Christians that there is only one Lord (and that lord is NOT Hitler). In 1986, correcting the false religion of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, the Belhar Confession condemned apartheid, arguing that “the church as the possession of God must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged.”

Amos chapter 5 says that God “despises the festivals” of false religion. True religion, it says, can be seen where “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Justice and righteousness – these are the marks of true religion, centered in the Lord and not in the lordless powers of this world.

LARRY BETHUNE, Senior Minister, University Baptist Church, Austin

The causes of war are always complex. Read the religious rhetoric of the American Civil War (Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation), and you would think it was primarily a religious conflict, though any historian would recognize religion was a secondary and supporting element rather than a primary cause. Every warring people use religious justification to inspire unity on the home front and cohesion among the troops. Religion is especially vulnerable to manipulation by demagogues who “take god’s name in vain.”

To be sure, as a deep part of thesocial and ethnic fabric of societies, religion is usually part of the conflict that leads to war, and religious conflict between Muslim factions is integral to the violence in Iraq as a tool of political motivation if not also part of the original hostility between parties. But to claim the conflict is purely religious is naïve. Because religious differences are significant in the conflict and used by both sides, it is necessary to understand those differences in seeking solutions. But resolving religious differences (were that possible) would not remove the other political, historical, or cultural conflicts involved.

Religion has an undeniable share of the division, violence, and warfare in human history. Religion also shares in peacemaking, conflict reduction, and long periods of peace. Just as blaming politics for war would be an unsustainable argument for rejecting all politics, blaming religion for war is unsustainable as an argument for doing away with all religion. The question is what kind of politics, what kind of religion, encourages war? Religion that insists on uniformity of belief, claims to be the only truth that all must obey, abrogates religious liberty, and demonizes other religions or peoples is bad religion. And in every case, bad religion is a misinterpretation of the core narrative major religions proclaim.

Therefore, rather than using religious conflict as a basis to reject all religion, humanity is better served in appealing to the positive and peace valuing aspects of the religions of warring parties as a means to seek and sustain peace. But given human nature, waging peace is always a longer, more delicate, and patient process than waging war.

RIC DEXTER, Nichiren Buddhist area leader, Soka Gakkai-USA

Buddhism describes the three poisons of greed, anger, and foolishness. Anger refers particularly to malice born of hatred, and foolishness to delusion, ignorance, or error, where one takes the false for the true and the seeming for the real. These three poisons are recognized as the underlying cause of famine, pestilence, and war.

From the earliest stages of civilization wars have taken place between different tribes. Rivalries for place, for power, for possession required justification for destroying “the other.” As the different tribes had their titular gods, religion has often been the avowed reason for conflict.

You can see how this might apply even in the wars most accepted as “religious”. As the Byzantine Empire was collapsing the Arabs began to move into the territory. The Emperor called to the Pope for military help to drive the invaders back. There was already a struggle for supremacy between the Western and Eastern Christian churches and sending troops into the territory could only further the ends of the Roman church. In what has become known as “mission creep” the objective was expanded to retake the “Holy Land”.

What was essentially a fight for territory became a “religious” war. This justification became a recruiting tool. Kings and peasants alike may not understand going to a foreign land so someone else can have power, but they could understand fighting the infidel for the “glory of god”. Things haven’t changed that much. Before going into the service I sought counsel from ministers. I was told those I was to fight “didn’t know God” and “don’t respect life the way we do”.

“The Troubles” in Ireland was a political struggle that took on the appearance of religious war because each side was predominantly of different religions. In Iraq, try to look beyond the labels of Sunni and Shia. A group who were in power, and mistreated “the other”, lost that power. Those who took control were “the other” who looked down on the tribe they replaced. Is this a religious war, or a civil war where religion is being abused to justify political ends?

As human beings we all have within us the enlightened nature and the nature of fundamental darkness. Our enlightened side seeks peace for ourselves and others, our deluded side wants our peace at the cost of others. In pursuit of their own ends, people have often co-opted religion to satisfy their greed, anger, or foolishness.

Due to a lack of spiritual intelligence, ignorant persons misidentify the eternal self with the temporary body and mind. Such illusion does not only include ideas such as, ‘I am White’, ‘I am Black’, ‘I am American’, ‘I am Democrat,’ but also the illusion also includes ideas of, ‘I am Hindu’, ‘I am Christian’, ‘I am Muslim.’

For the person who has received spiritual training understands that, ‘I am not this body but rather I am an eternal soul.’ Therefore a spiritually wise soul does not discriminate against others based on temporary bodily designations but rather sees the soul proper.

“He who sees systematically everything in relation to the Supreme Lord, who sees all living entities as His parts and parcels, and who sees the Supreme Lord within everything never hates anything or any being.

One who always sees all living entities as spiritual sparks, in quality one with the Lord, becomes a true knower of things. What, then, can be illusion or anxiety for him?” - Śrī Īśopaniṣad 6-7

The decision by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to admit a Palestinian Muslim to the school’s Ph.D. archaeology program has stirred attention. For one thing, the decision was an exception to the seminary’s admissions policy. Southern Baptist seminaries have historically admitted those who intend to become Southern Baptist ministers. Churches send money to help pay for each student’s tuition. And the idea that churchgoers were sending their money to educate a Muslim student didn’t seem right in some quarters.

Seminary President Paige Patterson says the student is “a peace-loving man” who worked with other Southwestern students at the school’s archaeological dig in Israel and will abide by the school’s moral conduct requirements. He said non-Christians have been accepted in the past in rare cases with hopes they would convert.

All religious faiths are exclusive in one form or another. All have their rules, regulations and conventions. No question that Southwestern has the right to set the conditions for admission – and even the obligation to do so in furtherance of its religious faith. Denison asks a question: What’s the best way to engage people of other faiths?

The Southwestern decision raises some provocative questions: If it were a, say, Methodist seminary, not Southern Baptist, would it have been news? What if the student hadn’t been Muslim? When are a religious faith’s principles and guidelines helpful and when are they not? How should people of one faith engage people of another faith?

That’s this week’s question: What’s the best way for people of one faith tradition to engage people of another?

So I begin with an inside joke from my rabbinical seminary, Hebrew Union College. We rabbinical students liked to refer to the HUC dormitories as “The Monastery.” Why? Because they are dark, dank, and full of Christians! (rimshot).

Let me explain. I suppose this is news because of the sectarian tone and posture of the current Southern Baptist movement. My seminary, Hebrew Union College, has accepted and been training large numbers of non-Jewish PhD students, mostly sponsored by a variety of Christian seminaries, for decades. HUC has raised up several generations of academically sound Christian scholars and professors in the fields of Bible, Semitic Languages, Iron Age and Greco-Roman History, and Comparative Religion. We do with a two-fold agenda – it’s good for future rabbis to interact with current and future ministers, and we hope that the exposure to Jews will foster understanding among Christians through the broadening of their teachers. Kind of a spiritual/intellectual version of trickle-down economics theory.

By comparison, the SBTS “hope they would convert” is quaint, condescending, and eye-brow-raising all at once. And I have to ask – if the hope is for conversion, shouldn’t the doors be opened wide? Sure, it’s expensive to underwrite a graduate student, but bang-for-the-buck proselytizing, capturing some “big brain” souls in the Muslim world sounds like the way to go. In terms of our inter-faith goodwill goals, accepting outside PhD candidates has made a big difference. On the other hand, given the tone of some of the response, this guy needs to prepare himself to be the Jackie Robinson of SBTS.

I teach at a Presbyterian Seminary which recently graduated a practicing Muslim.

He was an outstanding student, respectful of what Christians believe and value.

He was gifted at entering into Christian ways of thinking, reflecting with Christian peers on why it matters that we confess that God is a Trinity, that Jesus is divine, and that the promise of God’s coming reign does not mean we sit back and wait, but that we actively engage what God is calling us to do and to be in this world.

This former student models for me how it is that people of one faith tradition can engage people of another faith tradition. The short answer is: with respect, with listening ears, and with passionate curiosity to know what makes the other faith tradition “tick.”

When respect of the other, commitment to listening, and curiosity are absent, engagement between and among faith traditions is not possible. Not only should faith-based institutions examine prospective students for these qualities, but they should also reflect on whether they can extend respect for, attention to, and genuine interest in the prospective student.

The Muslim graduate of my institution has become a friend who continues to teach me what it looks like for people of different faith traditions to engage one another. He has brokered a couple of invitations for me to speak at Muslim gatherings. There, I have begun to make friends with his friends, people who are respectful of Christianity and curious to know what I believe. Their attentiveness to me has created a context in which I not only share my faith, but where I have become increasingly interested in learning what they believe. Just a couple of weeks ago, in fact, I had the privilege of sitting around a table with Christian and Muslim women. Together we compared passages about Mary from our sacred Scriptures, considering what Mary has to teach us about being people who are responsive to God’s radical call on our lives.

As is commonly said, and turns out to be true: the best way for people of different faith traditions to engage one another is by becoming friends.

The Southwestern situation is peculiar in various ways that make it possible as an exception to the rule for a seminary. The area the student is pursuing for doctoral studies is archaeology, not direct ministry. The opportunity allows him to see and share up close aspects of Christian community while really studying the roots, history and sociology of the faith. For these reasons, this kind of close cooperation seems plausible to me and mutually beneficial. There will be a direct and full exchange of ideas and beliefs that will benefit both the visiting student and the other seminarians he will get to know.

First-person knowledge is often healthy in areas of religious engagement. So this kind of face-to-face engagement is what we need. The fact that it is in an institutional context that is tied to history as much as faith means it is a functional way to proceed.

JOE CLIFFORD, Head of Staff and Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church of Dallas

I have the privilege of serving on the Board of Trustees of Austin College, a liberal arts college in covenant relationship with the Presbyterian Church, USA. Though the College was founded by Presbyterians and continues to celebrate its affiliation with the PCUSA, only 7% of the student body are Presbyterian. The majority are from other Christians traditions. 11% are people of other faiths and 6% have no religious affiliation, so non-Christians outnumber Presbyterians.

The religious life of the campus, led by a chaplain who is an ordained Presbyterian pastor, is guided by three values: hospitality, humility, and honesty. All people are received with hospitality. Interfaith dialogue is conducted with humility. And the religious convictions held as Christians in the Presbyterian tradition are communicated honestly . In a cultural context of growing religious pluralism this is how people of faith should engage people of another faith, or people of no faith at all.

While recognizing the particularities of our different faiths and the sometimes mutually contradictory tenets of our faiths, people of one faith should engage the people of other faiths with respect and understanding. If when the peculiarities of language and imagery that often separate us are stripped away, and we are left with the universal prescription with which we can repair creation, then we ought to recognize the value of the other’s faith in getting that job done.

If instead, however, the message of a faith is dictatorial and tyrannical, insisting on universal compliance, universal agreement with that faith’s tenets for all humankind irrespective of the language, imagery, and culture through which God has “spoken” to those of other faiths, then we are left with a distorted message and often disastrous consequence for “the other.”

RIC DEXTER, Nichiren Buddhist area leader, Soka Gakkai-USA

Unless we live a very insular life, each and every day we interact with people of other faith traditions. While those meetings don’t always involve discussions of our faith, the benefits of that faith is demonstrated through our thoughts, words, and actions.

The best way to engage people of other faith traditions is the same as the best way to engage all people, with respect.

An example of this kind of respectful interaction is demonstrated by my teacher, Daisaku Ikeda. He has held and published dialogues with people as diverse as Rosa Parks, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Arnold Toynbee. In establishing the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research he appointed a Sufi Muslim, Majid Tehranian as its first director.

Soka University, a Buddhist university in California, was founded upon the Buddhist principles of peace, human rights and the sanctity of life. SUA offers a non-sectarian curriculum that is open to top students of all nationalities and beliefs. Instead of a purpose in inviting people of other faiths to convert them, the mission of SUA is to foster a steady stream of global citizens committed to leading a contributive life.

When I first began practicing Buddhism I was told I should dedicate my life to creating a world where “children were not sent to war to kill other children.” I pray that such a world is also one where embracing someone of another faith would not make headlines.

LARRY BETHUNE, Senior Minister, University Baptist Church, Austin

In many disputes around the globe, political differences and competition for resources between peoples are the actual sources of conflict rather than the religious differences, which are employed secondarily as authorizations for conflict. Separating religious from political/social differences creates the necessary space for peaceful interreligious engagement to begin. Because religious faith can never be coerced from the outside, respect for each other’s faith is essential to peace. Because extremists ignoring this truth use religion to authorize violence in a nuclear age, interfaith peace is essential to human survival.

Interfaith engagement begins with respect and moves to a willingness to connect. There is no substitute for intentional personal relationship at a human-to-human level with people of other religions. Understanding each other’s beliefs, traditions, and spiritual practices through conversation and observation is helpful. Observing, and where allowed, participating in each other’s sacred rituals is meaningful. Such interfaith connection deepens one’s own spiritual identity while building friendship. Working side by side in projects of charity and community service also builds connections that allow friends from other traditions to live together in peace.

Intentional interfaith efforts turn strangers into friends and enemies into allies. People who are threatened by interfaith connections either have an insecure grasp of their own faith tradition or resist losing the power to manipulate their own co-religionists through fear of the unknown “other.” Such fear tactics are common in Christian ecumenical efforts, let alone interreligious efforts.

But what faith is worth following that fears outsiders and treats them as an enemy to be conquered rather than a potential friend to be made? What kind of faith hesitates to bear witness to its deepest truths while listening to the deepest truths of another with the same openness with which it hopes to be heard? Any faith that authorizes violence and murder in the name of its God is not worthy of any followers at all.

Too often interfaith engagement draws out the worst aspects of a religious tradition. Instead, the goal of our engagement in interreligious connection should be to bring the best of our spiritual identity into the relationship.

The discussion about why and how to engage people of other faiths becomes a good foundation to build upon cohesive societies, where none of us has to fear the other and continue living in peace. I am glad the issue of admission of a Muslim student at the Southwestern Baptist Seminary has come up; it’s a pivot for a positive change.

God created everything in harmony and set the matter aspect of the universe to be in balance – like the Jupiter, Moon and other items that function precisely on a trajectory in their own space. However, when it comes to humans, one of the other aspects of creation, God did not put us on auto-pilot. Instead, he gave us freedom and a brain to figure out such balance, maintain, and restore if lost.

Being the programmer of the universe, and because he intentionally created each one of us to be different, he knew we are bound to have conflicts and tear each other apart. So he offered guidance to each tribe, community or a nation to preserve that harmony and live in peace.

The Quran is one such book of guidance and God says in verse 49:13 (Asad translation), “O men! Behold, we have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is all-knowing, all-aware.”

God’s emphasis is on “knowing each other” and those who make that effort; he calls them the noblest among you. Indeed, if we can learn to respect the otherness of others, and accept the God given uniqueness of each one of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge.

Jesus called on such individuals on the Mount of Beatitudes, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Indeed, I would urge Seminary President Paige Patterson to consider developing a teaching policy based on the essence of Jesus’ mission: peace on earth.

If you trace the bloodshed, hatred and ill-will over the last 12 known centuries of conflict between Muslims and Christians, a few men among them have gone against the teachings of their own faiths. Indeed, more students of other faiths need to be admitted, not to convert, but to teach “blessed are the peacemakers” and the “noblest among you” and produce conflict mitigaters.

Note: I had a radio show called Wisdom of religion, all the beautiful religions and the Dallas Baptist Seminary had called me to let me know that they are recording it, and teaching it.

JIM DENISON, President, Denison Forum on Truth and Culture

When do souls come before rules? When do rules help us reach more souls?

Jesus healed on the Sabbath, despite objections by the Jewish authorities. Paul refused the legalists’ demand that Gentiles be circumcised before they become Christians. Clearly there are times when souls must come before religious regulations.

Yet Paul had Timothy circumcised, lest his Gentile apprentice become a hindrance to the Jews. And the apostle submitted to a Jewish ritual in Jerusalem so that he might engage his own culture more effectively (Acts 21:22-26). Clearly there are times when following religious rules helps us reach more souls.

While our approach to religious regulations changes with the context, here’s an unchanging fact: To engage people of another faith tradition, we must build authentic, reciprocal relationships with them. Our purpose is not only to share our faith, but to learn of theirs. It is to share our common humanity and meet our common needs. Then, Jesus said, others will know we are his disciples by our love (John 13:35).

Nearly 51 years ago, President Kennedy declared: “In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s futures, and we are all mortal.” Here we find the basis for genuine engagement with fellow mortals, whatever their religious tradition. An evangelist has been defined as “one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.”

MATTHEW WILSON, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Southern Methodist University

In terms of the specifics of this case, I would defer to the seminary’s decision-making process. My own inclination is to say that they made the right choice in admitting the Muslim student. Schools in my own Catholic tradition, from pre-schools through Doctoral programs, typically admit students of all faiths and of none, on the assumption that some will be drawn to the faith through the truths revealed in Catholic education, and that even those who are not will emerge with a greater respect and affection for the Church and her teachings. Had the institution instead decided not to admit the student, however, that would also have been understandable, particularly given its status as a seminary rather than a more general university.

As to the more general question of how we should approach people of other faiths, it is very important to avoid two opposite but equally erroneous tendencies. The first is an intellectually and spiritually lazy surrender to relativism. This route says that all faiths are equally true and beautiful ways of trying to understand and connect with the divine, and thus it makes no sense ever to have theological disputes or to try to win converts. People should just follow whatever spiritual path “works for them.” While this approach has the appeal of minimizing religious tensions, in the end it trivializes our most deeply held beliefs. If we say that two world views with mutually incompatible belief elements are “equally true,” what we are really saying is that neither is true. What we imply by our unwillingness to engage the sometimes uncomfortable competing truth claims of different faiths is that, in the end, we’re all just making up stories to make sense of our own lives and the world around us. This, of course, is what the atheists believe, but it is an untenable position for a person of genuine faith. Ultimately, bland ecumenism becomes a very slippery slope to tacit agnosticism.

People of all religions, therefore, ought to have the courage of their convictions, embracing unapologetically the belief that their faith offers the fullest understanding of God and man–not just for them, but for everyone. I firmly believe that not smoking is a good choice. If I am right, this is true not just for me, but for others as well. It doesn’t mean that I have to go around hounding and hectoring people who choose to smoke. But if asked, I will make no secret of my belief that the choice I have made would behoove them as well. So, too, with faith.

At the same time, we must also resist the temptation to denigrate and minimalize other faiths. A belief that our own religion offers the fullest understanding of the divine should not be taken to imply that there is no truth and beauty in other traditions. Many Western Christians benefit enormously from the mystical and meditative traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy, Sufi Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, finding in them ways to connect more deeply with God. Many other Christians find deep spiritual meaning in sharing a Seder meal with Jews at Passover. These should not be seen as statements that our theological differences are irrelevant, but as celebrations of our common quest to know and to serve God. So long as we don’t start down the fruitless, presumptuous, dead-end road of declaring who can be saved and who is destined for damnation, full faith in our own tradition can go hand-in-hand with respect for the truth and beauty to be found in others. It requires the simultaneous possession of the conviction discussed above and the humility to admit that we all see “through a glass darkly” and fall short of the Glory of God.

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

The appropriate way for people of one faith tradition to engage people of other faith traditions is to assume the posture of listening and learning—in both directions. Anyone who seeks a current example need only study the approach of Pope Francis during his recent trip to the Middle East. He has visited with the Muslim leader of Palestinians and with the Jewish leader of Israel. He has been careful to listen as well as talk, and he has been intentional about visiting their sacred sites with respect.

But some religious groups, organizations, and institutions have viewed their responsibilities toward their own traditions in terms of needing to be exclusivist when relating to other traditions. In other words, they insist that theirs is the only way.

Sectarian differences within some religious traditions develop that way. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, for example, invited a member of its own board who is a minister in its own denomination to preach in its own chapel services. But when his sermon spoke approvingly of a kind of prayer that the seminary opposes, the school declined to show respect for his sermon and deleted it from the school’s web site.

That was an internal matter within a specific Christian sect.

When people of one faith relate to people of an alternate or even antithetical tradition, exclusivist claims accomplish nothing. We are no better served if Muslims seek to impose their views upon Christians than we are if Christians seek to impose their views on Muslims.

We honor our own traditions by practicing them when we encounter persons of other religious traditions. For Christians who adhere to the Biblical witness, our teachings include showing hospitality to strangers and treating “aliens” as if they were members of our own communities. The doctrines and disciplines of the Christian faith demand that we receive and respect an adherent of some other tradition. Certainly that is what Methodist doctrines and disciplines prescribe. And that is why one of the schools in my tradition would draw less public notice than an exclusivist school has done.

Perhaps the decision in Fort Worth is a sign of progress. Perhaps the need to impose our views on others is waning on the campus that has previously taken rigidly exclusivist positions.

AMY MARTIN, director emeritus, Earth Rhythms; writer, Moonlady Media

How to engage people of another faith? With humility and by example. Certainly not with any of the options outlined, unless the goal is to push more and more people, especially millennials, away from your religion and all religion in general.

Why humility? To quote theologian Robert Hunt, “Religion is the penultimate answer.” All any faith path can do is try to understand the ineffable the best it can with the two pounds of grey matter we’ve been blessed with along with our limited life perspective. The crucial word here is “try.” And as has been mentioned many times in the Bible, as well as other spiritual texts, it is only by our actions that we can be truly known.

DANIEL KANTER, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas

The missing link in this story is that the Southern Baptist seminary has failed to ask itself, ‘how might adding a Muslim to our program make us better?’ The problem with our hard-formed silos in the religious landscape is we always think we have the greatest good to share. When we sit inside the airtight sanctuaries of our own faiths we fail to even entertain the question of how we might be changed by embracing someone different from us. The church in general is rather famous for such exclusive behavior. My faith seeks to retain who we are by inviting the truths of others to influence us. To build a truly inter-religious world we must see the richness of all faiths rather than fear their influence on us.

The recent history of religious activism in our politics has been largely about the Christian right. Robust new churches and growing congregations are part of the success story of conservatives who have focused on social and family issues. At the same time, something else has happened. Young Americans today are less affiliated religiously than any time in our history. Fully one-third of Americans under 30 are unaffiliated with a formal religious group, according to Public Religion Research Institute. One in five 18- to 29-year-olds say that religion is not important in their lives, compared to only 10 percent of those 50 and older who say that.

A new report from the Brookings Institution suggests there is an opportunity at the moment for the Religious Left to reassert itself. How? By a concerted focus on economic justice.

The report, “Faith in Equality: Economic Justice and the Future of Religious Progressives,” outlines big challenges for religious political witness: growing secularization, divisions between religious and secular Americans, our polarized politics and a weakened infrastructure for many mainstream churches. According to a Brookings blog post: “The Religious Right spoke to the country’s worries about social change. The religious progressive movement speaks to the country’s desire for economic change. The persistence of poverty, the decline of social mobility and rising inequality all demand new departures in policy and politics. There is wide room for social action but there is no consensus on what form new approaches to poverty, mobility and opportunity should take. “

There’s a counter-view, of course. Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy says “Religious Left dead-end activism” has contributed to problems, not solved them. “The old Religious Left is mostly faded, having helped marginalize the once mainline churches whose elites sustained it. Now liberal religious activism depends on evangelicals falling away from the core of their faith.” Sounds like political polarization.

Recognizing the virtue of helping the poor and promoting equality – which no one disagrees with, at least in principle – is Brookings right? Is the time ripe for an active push for social justice by the Religious Left, including active government involvement, active church engagement? And if so, would that actually stem our growing secularization, help close divisions between religious and secular Americans, and strengthen the weakened infrastructure of liberal churches?

JIM DENISON, President, Denison Forum on Truth and Culture

In the 1970s, 66 percent of Americans raised in religiously unaffiliated homes broke with their parents’ example by becoming religious themselves. In 2012, only 29 percent did so. What has changed in the last 40 years? A generation ago, “truth” was held to be objective and the church was a trusted authority for moral and spiritual guidance. Today, “truth” is whatever you believe it to be. Clergy scandals and unpopular stands on social issues have marginalized the church for many. When those with no religion are asked why, they most commonly point to the perceived irrelevance of the church.

The Brookings Institution article is right: an active push for social justice would demonstrate the relevance of church to culture. The article is wrong, however, in targeting the Religious Left as the only catalyst for such a movement. Evangelicals and religious conservatives are more passionate about issues such as economic justice, human trafficking, and the environment than they have ever been. What I would like to see is a holistic movement of Christians across the theological spectrum who join together to advance the common good in Jesus’ name. As we focus on specific social problems, we find unity in praxis and persuasion in benevolence. Jesus gathered followers across the cultural divides of his day, focused them on felt needs, and empowered them to change the world. Why can’t we continue his ministry today?

A friend and mentor often reminds me: “You have no right to preach the gospel to a hungry person.”

As the question points out, economic change is desired not only by social progressives, but by the country in general.

I do think churches are well positioned to serve our nation by developing concrete ways of challenging classism and promoting economic justice.

The question is: What exactly should they do?

I’d say, first: churches need honestly to reflect on the ways they themselves are complicit in fostering classism. To what degree is a particular church guilty of welcoming those with more money, but holding those with less money at arms’ length? I remember, as a teenager, being told I had to move out of a certain pew in the front of my church because it was being reserved for a wealthy, well-known family. To this day, the memory of being asked to move brings a certain amount of shame, as well as confusion. I had sat down in that pew with the confidence that I was welcome regardless of how much money I had to contribute, regardless of whether or not anyone knew my name. Moving sheepishly to an open seat in the back of the church, it occurred to me that the message preached week after week in the pulpit was not the understanding operative at floor level.

Classism is alive and well in our churches, and always has been. It is named and condemned in the New Testament book of James, which says: “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or, ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?”

The second thing churches should do, then, is repent of their own classist ways and re-commit themselves to being communities that do not privilege those who are richer over those who are poorer.

Once awareness is fostered and repentance is being practiced, a church is ready to think about how it can address classism in the community and world beyond itself. What a church will actually do will depend on its particular resources and context. But any self-reflecting, repenting church might begin by understanding itself to be a kind of “revolving door” to the community in which it exists. Anyone and everyone who wants to is invited to enter in and take part, while members are at the same time also sent out and into the community at large, seeking to promote non-classist ways of relating and living.

I imagine what a “revolving door” church might look like in relation to literacy issues. Committed to fighting classism by empowering all kids with the ability to read, a church might develop tutoring programs that invite kids in, two afternoons a week, to learn and to practice. Some of those kids and their tutors might then go back out (through that “revolving door”) and into the community, advocating for school programs that really do work to leave no child behind.

The vision is that churches welcome members of the community in, and church folks move out from their steepled buildings and into the community. The hope is that eventually anyone can sit in any pew, or take any chair at the school board meeting.

Neither Brookings or Tooley have this right in my view. Since these concerns have always been a part of the religious left, I am not sure a “push” changes anything for them or for others. A question to ask is, why does one need religion to push for care of the poor? Those who care simply can do so. Such care is not an exclusive concern of those on the left. So I am not sure what it adds or that one could expect it to be effective for this goal. Those who opt out of religion are unlikely to opt in because of this. They can care for the poor on their own, if that is where their heart is. Religious affiliation ultimately is about a host of other concerns.

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

For the past hundred years in American religious life, there has been an ebb and flow of influence by conservative and progressive forces of faith. In the early twentieth century, the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy roiled the religious community. In the middle of the century, the progressive denominational and ecumenical interests were dominant. In the closing decades of the century, the religious right imposed both its will and its framing of public issues on American culture. By the early decades of the twenty-first century, words including “Christian” and “Evangelical” had been distorted to the extent that their original theological meanings disappeared in a wave of ideologically and politically conservative understandings.

One of the most effective ways for religious progressives to reassert themselves is to reclaim their own language and to reconnect with their own histories. William Jennings Bryan, in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, identified himself as a Christian socialist. In that same period, religious bodies and church-related organizations felt compelled by their own identities in mission to create institutions that had some capacity to promote the welfare of society in general. They supported improvements in the quality of public schools, they established private schools, they opened hospitals, they built orphanages, and they led the way toward massive social changes in public health, in voting rights for women, and in attention to the needs of the poor.

The time of the progressives is at hand. But in order to claim our place in the future, we will have to reclaim our heritage from the past.

JOE CLIFFORD, Head of Staff and Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church of Dallas

In a week where the Dallas Morning News featured a story about the evaporating middle class on its front page, in a city with only 5% unemployment but with 24% of our residents living below the poverty level and 40% in asset poverty, focusing on economic justice is not a strategy for church growth. It’s about facing the painful realities of the present economic situation, and the bleak future of our society if we don’t do something about it.

If a church’s call for economic justice is about preserving their religious institution, that church needs to die. Such self-seeking preservation is alien to the Christ of the cross. If, however, it’s about the call of the gospel to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and recovery of vision to those blind to the realities of poverty in the richest nation in the world, then it’s simply about being the church of Jesus Christ.

I could not care less about how that impacts “the weakened infrastructures of institutional religion” in our society. The Church is called to contribute to the infrastructure of a different world, the Beloved Community that is God’s vision for the world’s tomorrow, the tomorrow for which we pray for every time we say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth.”

REV. DR. DANIEL KANTER, First Unitarian Church of Dallas

From my point of view at least Unitarian Universalists have never gone away in pushing the religious left to activism. And to ignore the religious left’s contributions over the last ten years is to miss the power of the dialogue that has brought about a focus on: same-gender marriage, women’s rights, and the illegitimate political and social treatment of immigrants.

We have been working in interfaith coalitions that go beyond our small yet mighty numbers to shine a light on these issues from a spiritual perspective speaks clearly to the young adults who are disaffected from traditional religion. They have come to us in droves seeking ways to make meaning of their lives through real justice work that affects real lives. The religious right by comparison has lost touch with the core teachings of ‘love thy neighbor’ and being our ‘brother’s keepers’ in exchange for so called social issues that mismatch with where young people find themselves.

The young adults who come to us want to make a difference and know that they can’t press on in these three issues in particular without spiritual lives to nourish them and frame the impact of their work. It’s true that the less clear the religious voice is in society the less aware young people will be of its resource to help embed social action in a more powerful approach. But from my vantage point there would be no movements to bring equality to same-gender couples wanting to join in marriage, justice for sovereignty for women’s bodies, and non-prejudicial treatment of border crossing populations without the religious left pointing to the significance of having a spiritual life as part of the justice making tool box.

AMY MARTIN, director emeritus, Earth Rhythms; writer, Moonlady Media

Quite a bit of spin doctoring in this question and a painful amount of polarity. Conservative churches are described as “robust” and progressive ones as “mostly faded.“ The “counter-view” presented in the question is not even a counter-view. So let me offer one.

Judaism, often lumped in with the left, was doing quite well last I looked. Enjoying growth spurts are Unitarian Universalists, New Thought spiritual centers and independent urban churches based on the Jesus doctrine of love. Dallas, considered to be so conservative, has largest gay congregation in the world, the largest Unitarian church outside of the northeast, and a large liberal Methodist church that is thriving, to name but a few. And where in this left-right universe are Hindus, Buddhists and pagans?

The lines between church and club have become blurred. In a poll last year, over half said they go to church not for the sermon, but for the music. Weekly services are a social machine that keeps social ties strong, and reinforces opinion both spiritual and political. Lots of folks belong to Team Christian. But how many of them are followers of Jesus? If they were, social justice would be a priority at all conservative churches. Rather than conflating the social, spiritual and political, the spiritually unaffiliated contingent has split it. They also need social ties strengthening, but through technology they’ve found other ways besides weekly meetings at brick-and-mortar churches. They open source their spiritual education, choosing from a world of influences the ones that they experience most deeply. And as for politics, well, that’s personal.

Brookings is indeed right; the religious right has swung the pendulum too far to the right creating the much loathed division, class and imbalance in the society. I am certain the right would acknowledge their rigidity causing the need for an aggressive change to restore the balance. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention; I would say imbalance is the mother of social change.

The right has made attempts to monopolize and manufacture a God that belongs exclusively to them; the story is same with right-wing Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and other traditions.

It is natural for humans, particularly the moderate majority to seek and see the world in terms of justice as the work of God. The bottom line of the work of religious masters was to create peaceful societies based on justice, so people can get along and adhere to certain guidelines for the safety and common good of all. Indeed that is the purpose of civil societies as well.

The right has gone too far, and has pushed the society to a greater degree of imbalance, and their opposition to equal pay for women, affordable care, and same-sex marriage has created ample energy in the left to bulldoze the right in the 2014 mid-term elections, as a self-balancing self preserving act. The progressives have to be as aggressive as the conservatives to restore that balance in the society.

The Muslim right in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Iran have narrowed God to fit their version of what it ought to be; Malaysia’s right is pushing for legislation to exclusively own the name Allah for God, and preventing others from using the name. Indonesia is working on calling the Shia Muslims as non-Muslims. A similar percent of youth in those nations are sick of this extremism, and their rejection is taking different forms including the Arab Spring.

The Hindu right in India have cleverly adopted a new posturing in the guise of economic development, nearly half of India’s population is under 30, and we will know how many will fall into this trap when the election results, when the counting begins on May 16, 2014.

The Jewish right in Israel continues with settlements that are breeding a sense of injustice among the youth in Israel seeking justice.

Fully agree with the Brookings assessment that without aggressive opposition by the left, the right will dig in their heels and bring greater social injustice and turmoil.

When Sarah Palin ran for vice president, as Hillary Clinton considers a race for president and with Wendy Davis actively engaged in a bid for governor, one aspect of that culture war is what it means in religious terms to be submissive – most notably, a submissive wife. A recent USA Today article notes the subject is popping up these days, preached from the pulpit, pontificated about in a spate of new book releases and prominent on the agenda of next month’s Southern Baptist leadership summit. “All seek to answer the question of whether wives are 100 percent equal partners or whether ‘biblical womanhood’ means a God-given role of supporting their husbands — and, in turn, knowing their husbands are honor-bound to die for them, if necessary.”

Artwork/Todd Slater

Biblical references to husbands leading their households have long invited interpretations that sound to many people a lot like inferiority. Where’s the equality in submission? And yet Cynthia Rigby of the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and a member of the Texas Faith panel noted in the USA Today story, the Scriptures came out a world where women couldn’t own property and could be divorced by their husbands saying the word three times. In that world, holding wives up as “holy and without blemish” was a radical idea, she said. In her upcoming book, “Shaping Our Faith: A Christian Feminist Theology,” Rigby explores the idea biblical submission and its implications in the wider public debate.

With gender politics is so much part of our public debate, how do we interpret the idea of submission? What does submission in a religious, political and modern cultural sense really mean?

Almost always, the biblical call to submission is MUTUAL. In other words, as it says in Ephesians 5:21, we are called “to submit TO ONE ANOTHER out of reverence for Christ.” “Mutual submission” is crafted, it seems, to keep communities made up of diverse people, with diverse ways of doing things, reasonably healthy. Sometimes I submit to how you want to do things, and sometimes you submit to how I want to do things. “Mutual submission,” thus understood, protects those who are “underlings” in a given system. This is because (for example) it calls bosses not only to correct their workers, but also to listen to and be changed by their workers’ concerns and critiques.

The problem is that the word “submission” is hardly ever associated with “mutuality.” It is used, rather, to subordinate and diminish some in relation to others. Women to men. Children to parents. Workers to bosses. “Submission” is stuck to those who, in whatever system is operative, have lesser power. It is used to tell them that they are always the ones who should give in, since they ARE (in their very be-ing) subordinate. “Submission,” understood to apply to some and not others, is used to justify all kinds of abuses.

The term “submission” is so disassociated with “mutuality” that I think we should mainly stop using it for fear of being misunderstood; for fear of promoting injustices. But there are two problems with eliminating it from our vocabulary altogether. One is: what word might replace it? I guess one word we might consider is “compromise.” “Everyone needs to be open to compromise,” we might say, “if this community is going to be a place where all can thrive.”

The weakness of this replacement, though, is that “compromise” connotes each party “giving” a little, in relation to the other party, in relation to every particular situation or circumstance. It doesn’t quite get at what “mutual submission takes into account, that is: that there are those circumstances in which compromise is not appropriate; where I am simply wrong and should submit to your correction, or in which you are simply wrong and should be open to my correction. What word do we have for that?

A second problem with simply “scrapping” the term “submission” because of the way it has been abused is that it is in the Bible. It’s a big theme. So we who claim the Bible has authority in our lives have to work with it, to some degree (this is where, though, I don’t think we need to use the term itself in the public sphere, although the CONCEPT of mutual submission – however we name it – is everywhere a propos). To the degree to which the term itself comes up in religious discourse, I think we who are teachers have to be ready to dive back in and make the case for mutuality.

GEORGE MASON, Senior Minister, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas

This issue raises a more fundamental (no pun intended) matter of how we read the Bible today. Are we reading and applying it with the intent to reproduce the decisions of the early church that sought to discern how to apply the gospel in the 1st-Century culture in which they lived, or are we reading it in order to learn the kind of gospel reasoning they employed in order to apply it to the 21st-Century culture in which we live?

Those who try to enforce submission of women to men today in a time when the circumstances of women and men are radically different end up achieving the exact opposite of what the biblical writers sought to accomplish; namely, the protection and honoring of women. To try to enforce female submission today is to neglect the trajectory of the Spirit that began with the liberating work of the early church and has finally been achieved to a great degree today with the full equality of women to men.

Yale theologian, George Lindbeck, used the powerful illustration of how important culture is to meaning by employing the example of a road sign that reads “Keep Right.” It seems obvious that its intent is to keep motorists safe by staying in their lanes and not encountering oncoming traffic. But transplant that same sign onto British soil and it becomes dangerous and maybe fatal.

The same is true when we try to impose the wisdom of the early church in protecting women to our day. It ends up discrediting the very gospel we preach. Advocating full equality of men and women does not yield a departure from respectful relationships; it leads to them. Submission works both ways as men and women defer to one another in love. Hierarchy in relationships should end with parents and children. Love between adult men and women is mutual and equal or it is not the fullest expression of Christian love.

The old joke goes like this: “And God promised man that good and obedient wives would be found in all four corners of the earth. Then God made the world round. And God laughed and laughed and laughed.”

I like that God! When God is cast as a man, as it is in Christianity, it’s too tempting for man to think he is a God. A myriad of serious abuses against women arise from this pernicious assumption, sometimes held so deep it is unconscious.

In Taoism, it is illogical to hold rigid, polarized definitions of how men and women should be. The yin-yang symbol shows the male and female of all things to be in equality. The male/yang side has a dot of yin and the female/yin side contains a dot of yang. The line dividing them is flexible and curved.

There is but one submission: to God, to Tao, to the divine force that is so unimaginably immense that gender is meaningless. In Taoism, this submission — described as living in accordance with Teh, the universal laws of nature — is the faith’s very bedrock.

I must point out that this even being a matter of discussion is why the spiritual-not-religious is the fastest growing segment of faith and why millennials are leaving the church in droves.

MATTHEW WILSON, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Southern Methodist University

The biblical passages urging “submission” or “subordination” within the context of marriage are some of the most sensitive and uncomfortable ones in scripture in light of modern sensibilities about gender equality. Ephesians 5, probably the most famous of such selections, is a popular text at Catholic weddings—but typically in its “short form,” which begins at verse 25 (“Husbands, love your wives…”) and thus has admonitions only for the groom.

We modern Christians tend to shy away from discussions of obedience or submission, particularly in a gendered context, in part for good reasons. These passages have at times historically been used to justify mistreatment of women, to empower domineering husbands, and to marginalize women’s voices. They have also sometimes been misapplied out of the marital context to justify an unduly privileged position for men in business, politics, or society more generally. Viewed in its proper context, however, Saint Paul’s discussion of submission and subordination within marriage has radically different implications—it is fundamentally about love, oneness, and mutual service. This message all too often gets lost when we view marriage through the distorting lens of ideologies of power, whether patriarchal or feminist.

Saint Paul’s famous words about wifely submission are immediately preceded by a more general injunction: “Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). This should make it abundantly clear that we are not talking about any sort of conventionally hierarchical power relationship. A general and a private are not “subordinate to one another”; neither are a CEO and a factory worker, or a parent and a young child. These are strict linear hierarchies, where one person clearly has a power and expectation of command over the other. That two people are subordinate to one another, however, implies a relationship of mutual service and sacrifice.

Fundamental to Saint Paul’s instruction here is the idea that husband and wife are one flesh. In my own Catholic tradition, this idea is embodied in the notion that the marital commitment is not partial, provisional, or temporary, but rather a total and indissoluble sacramental union. It is in this context that we must understand a husband’s call to servant leadership (a seeming oxymoron that is at the heart of Christian faith)—one that makes sense only in tandem with the command that he love his wife as Christ himself loves the Church. If husband and wife have truly answered the call to oneness inherent in marriage, then the very meaning of “subordination” is radically transformed. In our bodies, is the brain subordinate to the heart, or vice-versa? The question is nonsensical from a hierarchical standpoint; each is profoundly dependent on the other, and both are indispensable components of the one body. So, too, are husbands and wives in marriages where the “I”s have truly dissolved into a “We.”

Like every other spiritual ideal, the perfect marriage is one of which we always fall short. No man truly and consistently loves his wife as Christ loves the Church—that would entail a superhuman level of nobility and self-sacrifice. Likewise, it is very hard for any of us to be perfectly and consistently subordinate, especially in a hyper-individualistic culture that relentlessly stresses self-actualization and rewards self-aggrandizement. But holding up those values as ideals, and continually striving to live them more fully, is at the heart of the biblical message about marriage. As Saint Paul himself concludes and summarizes his message in Ephesians 5:33: “Each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.” That is a vision of marriage with which most people will find it hard to argue.

This week’s question raises a thorny issue for Christians. In theological context, “egalitarians” believe that women are called and equipped by God to do all men do. “Complementarians” believe that God intends men to lead their homes and society, while women play the equally important role of support and encouragement.

I am an egalitarian, for three reasons.

One: I believe that the biblical call for wives to “submit” to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22) does not relate to leadership but to psychological roles. “Submit” translates the Greek word hypotasso, the voluntary decision to support and respect another. In my view, the word does not relate to the husband’s leadership position but to his personal need for his wife’s support.

Two: Women in the Bible serve in key leadership roles. In the Old Testament they serve as prophets and leaders (Judges 4:4; 2 Kings 22:14). Women in the New Testament are evangelists (Matthew 28:10), preachers (Acts 21:9), deacons (the probable translation of Romans 16:1), church starters (Acts 16:15, 40), and leaders (Romans 16:7).

Three: I have witnessed women performing vital leadership roles around the world. In Cuba and China, I met women who pastor churches. In Malaysia, I knew women serving as evangelists. In Russia and Brazil, I met women who are missionaries. In Israel, I met women who are denominational and political leaders.

Biblical submission is mutual support and encouragement, whatever our gender: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

DANIEL KANTER, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas

Men have got to stop trying to control women. To apply ancient ideas from a text about a wife’s position in the family does two things; 1) it points to how out of date that idea is, and 2) it shows how the attempt to negate a woman’s place in society is tied to the need by men to control power and money.

We see this misogynist perspective in attempts to discredit women in politics, in the unequal compensation data collected each year, and in legislative attempts to get in between a woman and her doctor. True that men are discredited in politics with an equal fervor but women are subjected to a kind of framing about how they look and whether they are smart enough to do the job in ways men are never talked about. Women CEOs of companies are regularly shown to be equally adept at their jobs but compensated less by their male dominated boards. And the ideological legislation in places like Texas that restrict women’s rights to medical care they want or need while manufacturing a public health crisis would never be thrust upon men.

Why is all this still happening in the 21st century? Until men confront their unease with giving women the power they deserve we will continue to see religious professionals promoting a woman’s role in submission within the family. This backward theology is more evidence of how religious traditions cannot adapt in the modern day.

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

The Biblical concept of submission must first be understood in terms of a believer’s relationship to God. The commandment says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” For Christians specifically, and for adherents of the Abrahamic traditions generally, submission to God is a foundational principle.

And for Christians specifically it is a liberating principle. We receive salvation and deliverance through submitting our hearts and souls and minds and strength to God’s grace, thereby finding reconciliation with God despite our spiritual brokenness and sin. We acquire the gift of being set free from fear, since neither oppressive powers on earth or demonic forces in the cosmos can separate us from the love of God. So, for Christians, submission to God is the pathway to freedom.

What happens too often is that the truths of the faith are diluted into half truths and the foundations of the faith are distorted into tilted interpretations. Slaves are told to submit to the Lord by submitting to their owners. Citizens are told to submit to the faith by submitting to a fuhrer. And, according to some views of scripture and some interpretations of Christian doctrine, wives are told to submit to their husbands.

It is a corruption of the Christian faith to suggest that any human authority—a slave owner or a head of state or a spouse—should supplant God as the one to whom a person should submit.

Submission means subservience and a yielding to the authority of another, and in this context, that authority is the male head of the family. What else would we expect from a book written in “a world where women couldn’t own property and could be divorced by their husbands saying the word three times.” That might well be the state of “biblical womanhood.” The question should be whether or not a book written, copied, translated, and interpreted by human hands (Jews are cautioned that “the Torah was not written in Heaven”) dating back to an ancient society and time should stand in the way of our attempts to create an egalitarian society? Wasn’t this same book used in the 19th century to justify slavery?

The Jewish people are about to begin our Passover holiday. We are reminded in the retelling of the redemption from slavery that as we repair the world (tikkun olam) in every generation, as each wrong is righted, we will discover new disabilities that need to be undone. The journey from slavery to freedom is an ongoing process which is not yet finished. Gender equality is still on the list.

Sorry, there are plenty of places where the Hebrew Bible can be criticized for androcentrism, sexism, even misogynistic. But there is no instruction for a wife to be submission to her husband, nor is there any attempt to justify that subjugation as a form of imitatio dei. Rather, I’d point to the Book of Esther, where Mordecai the Jew refuses to bow in submission to a human authority. And I’d add “Why did God create only one human? So that no one could say, ‘my father is greater than yours’” Since Jews also hold that males and female were created equal (Gen. 1:27), I’d argue the same principle applies in gender relations.

Most discussions about gender and submission are about power and control. That is where most cultural discussion takes us by default. It sets up a war between the sexes. That is tragic. What I see in Scripture and a text like Eph 5:22-33 where love and submission are juxtaposed does not take us there. The husband who is to love is to love like Christ gave himself for the church. This is not about power and control but love and service. The wife is responsive to that direction in life. Together they are called cooperatively to work together like two instruments in harmony.

There are no real power words in this text. We see words like nurture, care for, give, respect and love. When submission is defined in this mutually caring environment, it is also redefined so that power and control are not chief the concern, but mutual caring, nourishing and enrichment, where trust and respect abide. It is not about me as a person but us as a unit. In the end, that is a redefinition in terms and a radical reframing on love, submission, and mutuality. We all could benefit from reflecting on this reframing of the categories.

LARRY BETHUNE, Senior Minister, University Baptist Church, Austin

The biblical instruction that wives be “submissive” to their husbands reflects the Roman household codes common in the dominant imperial culture in the first centuries of the Christian era. Parallel writings are found in the non-biblical sources of the day. This was a patriarchal culture in which women had limited voice and few rights. For the most part the early church sought to avoid persecution by fitting within and supporting the dominant culture to the degree that it could without compromising core religious values.

The household codes reflect a division of labor and purpose in a well-run Roman household. The Christian New Testament adapts these household codes in Ephesians with a preface that Christians should “be submissive to one another” before applying the same verb specifically towards wives. The biblical picture of wives being “subject to” husbands reflects the dependency wives had upon husbands in biblical times.

Given the patriarchal culture of the time and the difficult position of the church in its culture, the Bible in general and Jesus in particular are remarkably egalitarian towards women. The household codes, from wives to slaves (to take the order from highest to lowest in the household), reflect relationships that are mutual, respectful, loving, and peaceable in which everyone can thrive. The use of these texts to force women into submission in abusive households is itself an abuse of scripture. Moreover, in a modern culture quite removed from first century dominance by the Roman Empire, Christians have adapted the scripture with regard to the place of husbands, children, and slaves (a role which Christians led a fight to abolish). Shouldn’t the role of wives in the household be reconsidered also?

When Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced she was vetoing a “religious freedom” bill that targeted gay men and lesbians, she said religious liberty remains a “core value” in Arizona. But, she added, “So is non-discrimination.”

The debate over the Arizona bill – and similar proposals under consideration elsewhere – highlights the tension between two competing and deeply held American values: the right of people to practice their religion vs. the right to be free from discrimination. It’s a balancing act, and not an easy one.

It is at the heart of the debate over the Obama administration policy requiring businesses to provide health insurance for their employees that includes forms of contraception. It’s central to the argument by supporters of the Arizona bill that a baker who opposes same-sex marriage shouldn’t be required to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. Both sides make a claim on liberty.

Clearly, nobody’s advocating that the government sanction, say, the right to deny service to black people at a lunch counter – regardless of whether the owner says it violates his religious beliefs. At the same time, nobody’s saying a Jewish caterer must work the Nazi rally, even if the Nazis claim they’re being discriminated against.

The question is, as a matter of public policy, how to reconcile competing rights? How do we protect both the religious rights of one person (which may involve discriminating against some people) and the deeply held right to be free from discrimination? What’s the balance and how best do we achieve it?

As expected, our Texas Faith panel of experts on faith and public policy – theologians, activists, clergy, scholars – don’t agree. And in so doing, they offer provocative, thoughtful reasons. If you think you know what side you’re on, read our Texas Faith panel and think again.

I think Wayne is wrong in the framing of the question – this issue is totally analogous to “the right to deny service to black people at a lunch counter.” And he overlooks, too, that many Southerners justified their discriminatory practices against African-Americans on grounds of religious conviction. One needs only read Pastor Bob Jones’ (Of Bob Jones University) 1960 Easter sermon on the clear biblical mandate to segregate, a speech that stood upon a mountain of earlier Southern doctrinal and biblical exegesis justifying racial discrimination.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act, section II, knowingly granted no exceptions based on religion to private businesses to deny service. The same arguments, principles, and matters of law apply here. If one is offering a “service” or “facility” to the general public, even if privately owned, there is no right, license, or exemption to discriminate. You must serve all. Only “private clubs” with commerical functions can evade this universal legal (and I might add, moral) imperative. This rule has transformed the US for the better, and now, on this matter, is not the time to roll this back.

Here’s the big picture. The intolerant side of this question has lost the battle for the general culture – the battle for equal rights of gay people is entering its final stages. The wave of laws and amendments forbidding same-sex marriage was the intolerant camp’s “Battle of the Bulge,” their last ditch offensive to secure their POV as the law of the land. And now it’s being rolled back. It’s the Spring of 1945 and the forces of equality are moving forward on virtually every front. They understand that. So, while grudgingly yielding the battlefield, these “religious liberty” exemptions are attempts to create legally fortified ”intolerance bunkers.”

But I say the 1964 law already has granted them their legal shelters from fairness. If a cake baker doesn’t want to serve gay patrons, let him or her register the “Sectarian Christian Cake Baking Private Club” or the “Augusta Golf and Wedding Event Planners Club.” There are already 300,000 churches, synagogues, parishes, and other non-commercial, tax-exempt facilities that can pick-and-choose what kind of wedding events they will and will not host. The ability to discriminate already exists for them, The balance already has been achieved. Any expansion of these bunkers is, to my mind, a grave step backward for us as a moral society.

Jehovah’s Witnesses forbid blood transfusions on theological grounds, but the courts have forced them to allow this procedure for their children. Christian Scientists do not believe in “materia medica” (medical science), but the courts have forced them to allow medical attention for their children. If a baker refuses on religious grounds to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, should the courts take similar action?

Absolutely not. Merchants are not parents and consumers are not children. A wedding cake is not a life-saving medical procedure. The gay couple can obtain a wedding cake elsewhere; the child of a Jehovah’s Witness parent has no recourse other than the courts to obtain a blood transfusion.

Once we start forcing businesses to sell consumers whatever they want, where do we stop? Can Gentiles force Jews to keep their shops open on the Sabbath? Can non-Muslims force Muslims to sell food prepared in violation of Halal regulations? Will McDonald’s be required to sell alcohol if a single consumer demands it?

Merchants should have the right to do business according to their religious principles, and consumers should have the right to purchase legal goods or services. A solution to this conundrum: merchants should not be forced to violate their religious beliefs so long as consumers can purchase goods or services elsewhere. The merchant loses a sale and the consumer is inconvenienced, but each retains his or her essential rights.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).

As your introduction to the question shows, this is an incredibly complicated issue that has generated much emotion in the current highly polarized environment. Still, I think a possible standard is a simple one. If my act involves my actual participation in an event or gives an air of acceptance and celebration to an act that I have an objection of conscience to, then I cannot be compelled to do it by law and suffer legal sanctions for refusing to do. Such a law does not prohibit the person from receiving the service from somewhere but protects the person offering the service from communicating by a physical presence an acceptance of an act he or she actually disagrees with and senses they are participating in.

The selling of a service that provides a product only should not be protected, but if that service involves my presence and use of a skill, then it should be protected. So a photographer is distinct from a caterer, for the photographer is present taking pictures, while a caterer need not be and food is something all have in an array of settings. A florist is a more complicated case, since flowers celebrate the event, but it also should be protected.

The irony in the public discussion of this issue is that what was viewed as too restrictive when the situation was reversed (a prohibition with sanctions) is now advocated by those who had felt oppressed now the tables have switched. Nor is discrimination present when one has a remaining wide choice of people who will give such services. The labeling of such laws as a hate bill completely misses the point, since the issue is not about the person seeking the service, since there are many places where that service can be provided, but involves the freedom of conscience about the one providing the service, something our law has always been sensitive to protect.

In saying all of this, I am not suggesting one should actually refuse to give such service, I just think the protection should exist for those who feel strongly that their own conscience is violated by actively being present.

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

When we Americans committed ourselves constitutionally to the First Amendment, prohibiting Congress from passing laws that establish religion or prohibit the free exercise of it, we did more than create the concept that the government had to refrain from defining religious boundaries. We also created a means for the social order to occupy a space in which freely functioning religions could not impose their preferences on anybody except their own voluntary adherents.

Therefore, in the United States of America, the Roman Catholic Church can designate its ordained ministry as a male-only job classification. In doing so, it can still enjoy a constitutional protection from governmental interference, despite a clear system of laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender. Likewise, The United Methodist Church can place limits on the sexual orientation of its ordained ministers, even though such limits would be illegal in secular employment practices.

But religious bodies do not have absolute freedom within the larger social order. A religion that honors the ancient Biblical practice of polygamy cannot expect federal or state laws to protect that practice. A religion that enjoys traditions such as animal (or even human) sacrifice cannot expect the government to be indifferent to those activities. A religion that demands its adherents to treat physical ailments as spiritual defects, amenable only to prayer or ritual actions, cannot keep persons from receiving medication or surgery or psychiatric care. A religion that insists only persons of a certain race may attend its liturgies cannot order its adherents to impose those racist views in their public workplaces.

The social order, after all, has the right not to let religions impose their practices in violation of public virtues. Even though a religion may allow slavery, the society does not. Even though Jews and Muslims have dietary laws which they advise their practitioners to honor, society only has an obligation to recognize the freedom of a religion to stipulate such laws, not to follow them. Even though Protestant Christians early in the twentieth century exercised political power and imposed Prohibition on the American people, it became quickly apparent that the social order could find many ways to resist that imposition. And it had to be repealed.

Religion in America is a freely exercised, voluntary activity. But no religion can conscript the social order into its practices.

This is not a new issue. There has always been a balancing act during the history of our republic between personal liberty and the power of our elected authority. The social contract in which we all engage exchanges some of our absolute freedom to do what we choose for the safety and protection from the absolute freedom of others to do what they choose.

Certainly our religious freedom, our right to our religious beliefs, is one of our most basic American rights. This basic right, however, does not extend to our use of our religion to discriminate against and impose our beliefs on others with whom we disagree.

When religious beliefs are used as an excuse to discriminate against others, we are allowing the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection to be overturned. Although sexual orientation is not a protected class as is race, this question was addressed in the 1960s when some claimed that segregation was supported by their interpretation of their Bibles. Their insistence that God wanted the separation of the races to bolster their claim of religious liberty to deny access to African Americans didn’t stand then, and this false claim of religious liberty to harm gays and lesbians now should not as well.

Here’s a news flash, folks. We all associate with sinners all the time. We are ourselves sinners. If a person’s religious faith is so frail that associating with sinners threatens it, she or he has issues better dealt with by some soul searching and deep prayer than by passing a law allowing discrimination.

What these laws attempt to do is set in place a Stand Your Ground law for the religious right. All that is required is a subjective judgment that one’s “sincerely held religious beliefs” are threatened and one can refuse service. What’s worse, certainly for Christians, is that these laws actively encourage people to break the single most important commandment — to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

What’s even more dangerous is that these laws encourage the singling out of one group of people as being somehow worse sinners than any other group. This is how scapegoats are created and how dangerous stereotyping can lead to innocent people being murdered.

There are no “competing rights” here. The First Amendment already protects our freedom to practice our religions. What it doesn’t do is protect a “right” to enshrine our religious beliefs in civil law and thus impose them on everybody else.

The question of protecting the religious rights of a person and the right to be free from discrimination comes up time and again like a new day every day.

As a nation, we began our life with the immortal “declaration of independence” as our very first document, and we continue to rely upon it as our guiding principle. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

No man is an island; and no one can survive by himself or herself without living or relating with others. From the day we were born to the day we die, and the time in between is spent in connection with someone or the other. The systems of governance and civil society are shaped for co-existence; we cannot function without the other for a considerable period of time.

On the civil side of the equation, any law that breaks the “One nation” into many nations of my nation versus yours, knocks out the immortal declaration “that all men are created equal” is flawed. We have drawn a line and our current anti-discrimination laws are good, and must be improved upon rather than decimate them.

However, on the religious side, we need to debate and understand the morality of discrimination. Jesus did not condemn the sinner, and went a step further to prevent bigotry and discrimination by embracing the prostitute to make the point that we cannot refuse services to others.

We may not agree on the definition of sin, but the folks who see religion literally ought to consider keeping their doors open to bring the “sinners’ back into the fold of their brand of religion (any religion), instead of condemning them to hell and keeping them at bay. If the literalists want to earn the brownie points with God, then don’t shut the door.

Refusing service or products to an individual because I do not agree with his or her sexual orientation violates the fundamental bounds set by the civil society and religion.

LARRY BETHUNE, Senior Pastor, University Baptist Church, Austin

Religious liberty and freedom from discrimination stand in tension with one another but seldom conflict, if what Thomas Jefferson called “the wall of separation between church and state” is maintained. Most conflict results when the religious and public spheres overlap, often in the realm of business. Consider the two most recent issues: marriage equality and access to reproductive healthcare.

Marriage equality is a matter of civil rights and equal protection under the law for homosexual couples and their children. While some religious people may discriminate against homosexual couples and their families in their religious context, other religious people uphold their dignity, equality, and worth on religious grounds. As a religious liberty issue then, marriage equality engages the current constitutional crisis of the government favoring one religion over another.

Laws regarding special status and protection for married persons and families belong to the secular state and not to religion to legislate and enforce. The claim that marriage equality violates anyone’s religious liberty is simply dishonest. The state will never coerce clergy to officiate for a gay wedding service any more than it coerces clergy to perform heterosexual weddings outside their tradition or against their will. Nor should the state ever try to prevent clergy from performing gay weddings when their tradition blesses it. The religious definition and rules of marriage differ between religions and fall outside the sphere of the state; marriage equality respects the religious liberty of all traditions, but offers homosexual couples the same civil rights as heterosexual couples.

Where it comes to state mandates regarding health care (specifically reproductive care), any agency receiving government funding should follow government rules, which must respect the religious liberty of all persons. For instance, Catholic hospitals should be allowed to follow their ERD (ethical and religious directives) in their own facilities, but required to respect the religious freedom of their non-Catholic employees in providing reproductive healthcare – including legal abortion services – through access to other services. Non-religious businesses, which fall into the public sphere and are regulated by the government, should not in any case be allowed to discriminate on religious grounds.

Civil rights are a matter of public policy in a multi-religious sphere, where law treats all people equally. Religious liberty concerns the freedom to practice one’s faith without government interference. When the religious majority imposes its will on the minority through legislation, both religious liberty and civil rights are threatened.

When I am involved in ecumenical conversations I struggle with this question in a deeply personal way. Ecumenical conversations, for those who might not know, are conversations between persons who tend to be of the same overarching religious tradition (in my case, Christianity), but are part of different ecclesial bodies within that tradition. So ecumenical conversations often include around the table partners from various Protestant denominations (Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal), from Roman Catholicism, and from Orthodox traditions (Greek and Russian Orthodox churches).

We tend, in these conversations, to discuss global social issues (i.e., poverty, violence) and how our churches can join hands in the work of doing justice. These conversations occasionally manifest tension between “religious freedom” and “non-discrimination.” But questions about certain doctrines (church teachings) and especially about the shaping of global church leadership always do.

This is because some gathered around the conversation table believe women can be ordained as ministers and priests, and others do not.

What there is pressure to do in these conversations, in the name of honoring the religious convictions of all, is pretend that women’s ordination is an issue that need not get in the way of our common work in the world. We are expected to act as though holding that women cannot be ordained is as viable a faith stance as believing women can be.

The problem is, in honoring the religious convictions of all, the ordained women sitting around the table of the conversation are implicitly told they cannot be fully included or respected as equal partners in the very conversation that is going on. There’s a kind of unnamed “elephant in the room” dynamic, because everyone knows the women are seen by some sitting around the table as lacking the authority to speak and even as being fundamentally wrong, in their perception of who God is and what God desires for them to be and to do.

When it is understood by some gathered around the table that God does not allow women to teach men or to enter into any leadership roles in the church, how exactly can women sitting at a table of predominantly-male church leaders possibly make an accepted contribution or effectively exert influence?

In these contexts, women in positions of ecclesial leadership are discriminated against in the name of preserving the religious liberties of those who discriminate against them.

I have not yet discovered a way around this problem, to be frank. These values of religious liberty and non-discrimination, I think, are often in conflict. I guess what I think is even worse than them being in conflict is when we pretend discrimination isn’t as painful and destructive as it actually is, in the name of “standing up for what we believe” on the one hand, and “not making waves” on the other.

Holding to religious convictions that discriminate against women, for example, should at very least be coupled with acknowledgment that damage is done by these convictions. They do, however unintentionally, cause hurt and harm. To those who want to enter a store, alongside everyone else, and buy something. To those who want to sit at the table, with everyone else, and be truly accepted in the conversation.

To be merited rights is a metaphysical concept. There is no scientific or secular logic that procures rights upon an individual. Therefore this subject must be approached metaphysically with logic and reason.

The first question is: what is it that is being granted rights? If there is no logical understanding of the self or individual, then we cannot progress further.

In an American history we had slavery because it was said that dark-skinned people did not have souls. But where is the logic in that? By simple analysis one can see that the symptom of the soul or self is consciousness. As soon as the soul leaves the body, that body no longer carries its beauty and luster. That same symptom of consciousness is equal whether one is a man or a woman, dark-skinned or light, or human or animal. All feel pain and pleasure. However, because our society’s understanding of the self and consciousness is lacking depth, a large foolish section of society makes claims that animals are without souls and therefore without inherent rights.

Another large and equally foolish section of society will make claims that the unborn individual is also without rights. This is all because there is no clear understanding of the self which is the foundation of the discussions of rights. But there are books, such as the Bhagavad Gītā As It Is, that deal with this subject with such clarity that it can shock most people. Such clarity is necessary to govern social structures in a progressive way.

DANIEL KANTER, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas

It comes down to what is good for society. Is it good for society to allow individuals beliefs to create divisive laws that discriminate? The answer is no. The individual can have a private opinion (the baker can dislike LGBT folks and refuse to bake them a cake) but we can’t allow these opinions to force us to make laws that separate us (to make a law that protects the baker’s opinion about LGBT folks would create more inequality than we already have.)

As religious people we have lots of beliefs and ideas about what is right and wrong. But as a country we agree that the whole is better than the sum of its parts and that whole and common good has guidelines that don’t allow certain groups to be singled out. Thank God Arizona struck down that law. Had Brewer put it into law we as a society would have been faced with institutionalized labeling and protecting discrimination the likes of which we haven’t seen explicitly acted out since the civil rights movement.

Had that law been enacted, we as Americans would have had to ask, ‘Who is next?’

Author and speaker Diana Butler Bass suggests that we are in the process of reinventing American civil religion, the way we think about God and national purpose. And she says President Obama is part of that process. Obama, like his predecessors in the White House, has generally drawn the older form of civil religion complete with biblical language, social justice evangelicalism, and the themes of orthodox theology. But, she suggests, something has changed in the last couple of years. His speeches have included a view of God with an appeal to a wider faith audience, she says.

“Gone is the God of biblical revelation, the generalized God-as-Father-in-Heaven, and the distant God of Providence. Rather, Obama’s public God is a personal spirit, the relational presence of inclusion, community, empathy, irony, justice, and service. The God of this new and emerging American civil religion is a God who is with humankind, a far more embracing rather than judgmental figure, who loves and acts in the world through the works of human beings. Most theists can recognize this God (or gods) in their own religious traditions; most non-theists can interpret this sort of God as a spirit of beauty or justice in humankind.

This comes as America is becoming more pluralistic, as fewer people are claiming membership in orthodox religious groups. American civil religion has long emphasized a language and set of public practices based on the “biblical archetypes” of “Exodus, Chosen People, Promised Land, New Jerusalem, and Sacrificial Death and Rebirth” But the newer civil spirituality, which Bass says Obama expressed in his 2013 inaugural address, does something else: It reaches away from traditional civil religion and toward civil spirituality—a less dogmatic, more open-ended form of inspirational public speech.

Is she right? Is what is being called a new civil spirituality just the old civil religion in new clothes? Or is it a somewhat different, more inclusive, a new way of talking about God in the public square? And if so, isn’t that a good thing?

Our Texas Faith panel weighs in:

DANIEL KANTER, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas

This new civil spirituality is an improvement on the older form. The days of ‘being a city on a hill’ and creating a ‘new Jerusalem’ have faded and for good reason. Those notions came from a superiority complex and a desire for domination of the earth and over all who didn’t fit into neat categories of white Christian paradigms for what it meant to be human. Native peoples, Caribbean Islanders, and Africans brought over by slave traders all fell outside the ‘human family’ according to those who promoted our preeminence and uniqueness as a nation. The old God that walked with those who would create a nation that quickly objectified people and the earth as resources to conquer was the God of antiquated language used until now. Echoes of the sentiments of the old civil religion with the dominant father God that chose (some not all) to thrive and survive should become more faint as we realize that all as history but not the vision we want to promote. This new form of spiritual language in the public square acknowledges the hurts of the past and paints a vision of a nation that has the whole human family in mind. This change is a welcome one.

DANIELLE SHROYER, Pastor of Journey Church in Dallas and author of The Boundary-Breaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise

It makes all the sense in the world that Obama speaks of God in a more open and inclusive way, because that’s the God in which Obama (and his young speech writers) believes. It would be far stranger for Obama to invoke the American civil religion of the past in ways that are antithetical to who he is as a person and how he perceives his role as President. I do think this is a shift worth mentioning, and I don’t think it’s a politically calculated shift, either. It just doesn’t make much sense to most Americans (or, at least, to Americans my age and younger) to speak of God as angry parent or capitalist dream-fulfiller. And it certainly doesn’t make sense to continue to ignore the many people in this country for whom American civil religion has never spoken.

The truth is, we DO live in a pluralist country,one which was founded on the tenets of religious freedom and ought, therefore, to respect it and uphold it and even laud it. Our ability to live peaceably with one another in a robust democratic nation is indeed a gift and an example we offer to much of the world. Obama recognizes the widening landscape of American culture, and he knows how to speak to the values we share despite our diverse beliefs. In this way, civil spirituality may be able to bridge us together despite our political and religious differences, and provide a shared cultural practice that does uphold the best forms of American democracy and idealism. This is what every version of civil religion tries to do.

As a theologian, of course, I must also say there are clear and important distinctions between this new American civil spirituality and the gospel and person of Jesus Christ. While the two share similarities, they cannot be collapsed one into the other. Christ cannot be so generalized as to become synonymous with Buddha or Mohammed. And there is an important aspect to Christ which will always stand at arm’s length with nation, state, empire, generation, ready to speak prophetically against them. And that’s a good thing, too.

MATTHEW WILSON, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Southern Methodist University

If President Obama (and others) are indeed seeking to craft a new “civil spirituality” in the place of the old American civil religion, they are engaged in a largely pointless exercise that is ultimately doomed to failure. A civil creed reduced to the least common denominator, made so generic and innocuous that it encompasses every belief system under the sun, will prove to have very little purpose and value. How many people will be inspired to noble and heroic acts of patriotism and sacrifice, of profound giving to something greater than themselves, by “the relational presence of inclusion, community, empathy, irony, justice, and service?” Countless Americans in the camps at Valley Forge, or on the battlefields of World War II, or in the marches of the Civil Rights Movement, drew strength, determination, and support from the conviction that they were serving the purposes of God Almighty; I suspect that “a spirit of beauty or justice” would have proven an unsatisfactory substitute, at least for most.

It is, of course, true that the American religious landscape is changing, but it is possible to exaggerate the scope and magnitude of this change. Identification with organized religion is not as strong as it once was, but it remains the overwhelming norm among the American public. Even among millennials, the least religious cohort in American society, 70% identify with a religious tradition (and most of the rest are not atheists); among older Americans, the percentage is considerably higher. Professed identification with the Judeo-Christian religious tradition (with varying degrees of commitment and orthodoxy, of course) is the clear majority position in the United States, and will be for the foreseeable future. It would seem unnecessary and unwise to abandon appeals to their shared religious convictions in an attempt to reach out to the secular minority with an amorphous “civil spirituality”—one that is likely to ring hollow even to those at whom it is targeted.

We will lose much of the moral power of our political rhetoric if we dumb down the civil religion to be less “judgmental” and dogmatic.” Those leaders who most profoundly transformed American society (Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, etc.) have not shied away from moral judgment in their rhetoric. President Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address (one of the most powerful and moving pieces of American political speech), described the trauma of Civil War as a just divine punishment for the national sin of slavery. “If God wills that it continue,” he proclaimed, ”until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ I, for one, am glad that he did not try to soften and reframe this declaration in terms of “the relational presence of inclusion.”

The idea of civil religion is undeniably a problematic concept. Some theologians oppose it altogether, arguing that the cooptation of religious rhetoric by the state is usually in the service of some morally suspect purpose, and rejecting the notion that nations or societies have collective moral missions and destinies. If we are to have a civil religion at all, however, it must have some real theological roots and moral content to it. If it seeks to be all things to all people, it will mean nothing to anyone. It is worth asking to what moral purpose President Obama has summoned people with this new rhetoric of “civil spirituality.” Has he moved the nation to any great sacrifice, dedication, or mending of its ways? To what noble end could a spirituality this vague, formless, and a-theological ever inspire anyone? If the God in the public is square has been neutered, domesticated, rendered innocuous and stripped of all judgmental attributes, then one wonders why exactly we would want him there at all.

I think Bass may be right, that President Obama is helping shape a new civil spirituality. As she well discusses (and as is common knowledge even if you haven’t read her article), there is a significant rise in the numbers of those in the United States who do not identify with any religious tradition, but instead call themselves “the religiously unaffiliated,” “spiritual, but not religious,” “seekers,” “Nones,” or “New Atheists.” While these groups are quite different from one another in how they relate to those who DO identify with faith traditions (the “Nones,” for example, mainly desire to be conversation while the “New Atheists” mainly do not), what they have in common is that they are all unmoved by much of the old language and many of the old images characterizing “civil religion” of the past.

As is suggested in the set-up to the question, it used to be that a generalized depiction of God as distant, mysterious, and parental worked as a metaphor for those who are less inclined toward religion as well as for people of faith. We printed “In God We Trust” on our money and argued that everyone could find a way of signing on to what was meant by it, since it seemed to allow for a very general commitment to the hope that somehow we were being looked after by someone or something bigger than ourselves. These days, however, the idea of a God looking out for us from a distance is not especially appealing, even to many people who DO identify with faith traditions.

To illustrate anecdotally (always dangerous, but I can’t resist!): As soon as I finish writing this, I will head off to hear a lecture, given at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary by the Reverend Dr. Samuel Wells. The title of the lecture is “God Being With Us.” This morning Dr. Wells lectured on “God Being with God,” and tomorrow Dr. Wells will lecture on “Our Being With One Another.” Notice that the focus of these lectures is more consistent with what Bass identifies as “Obama’s civil spirituality” than with “the old civil religion.” And they are being given by a person who identifies fully with a faith tradition (he is the Vicar of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, London). As a theologian at work in the church and academy today, I can further testify that Dr. Wells’ lectures are on significant, but very common themes.

Bass is right that the civil discourse is shifting, and also right that President Obama is helping to shift it. But I hope she will write her next article on how people of faith are instrumental – even ESSENTIAL – in shaping the new civil spirituality. Churches are still bearing witness to the fact that God is sovereign, to be sure. But they insist this sovereign God has entered into existence with us and is with us on our journey.

Most of us Christians think, in fact, that “God with us” is at the center of everything that matters to the life of the world. If this is true, it might be the case that “the new civil spirituality” is actually closer to TRUE “religion” than the old time civil religion ever was.

JOE CLIFFORD, Head of Staff and Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church of Dallas

Diana Butler Bass is right in naming a shift in public expressions of American civil religion. While this change is reflected in the rhetoric of President Obama’s speeches, I do not think he is causing it. The shift is the product of demographic changes, not one person. It’s been under way for quite some time. From a societal standpoint, I believe a less dogmatic, more inclusive vocabulary regarding religion is a good thing. However, as a steward of a particular approach to faith, Reformed Christianity, I find it necessary to define the Christian faith apart from American civil religion.

For example, the Super Bowl embodies the American civil religion in many ways. This year’s pregame included a faith testimony by one of the team’s quarterbacks, a reading of the Declaration of Independence by various celebrities, the singing of a hymn, “O Beautiful for Spacious Skies,” serving as an opening prayer of sorts before the National Anthem. All this came before kick-off and commercials. These serve as the sermon of our civil religion. This is ritual, and 111 million people participated. It lifts up God and Country, not to mention many of the false gods of our society—wealth, violence, sex, etc. As a Christian, it’s difficult to see Christ in any of that.

If the emerging American civil religion is more tolerant and inclusive, this is a good thing. However, we should never confuse civil religion with authentic faith practiced through religions far greater than the interest of any one nation.

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

Is it too soon to start assessing the role that Barack Obama is playing in the reformation of America’s civil religion? It is tempting, but premature, to start a postmortem on the Obama presidency. He has just begun the second year of his second term. But more than a third of his total time in the White House yet remains to unfold in the future. Political pundits who have opposed him may be ready for final, critical assessments of his impact.

But it is far too early to analyze the changes in America’s civil religion under the influence of Obama. Certainly his election in 2008 occurred in the context of many unresolved feelings about the role of Black churches and some eminent Black church leaders in America’s religious life. The theological perspectives voiced by his former pastor created such a controversy that Mr. Obama felt compelled to renounce his long term membership in a Chicago church.

There are two salient elements in Mr. Obama’s approach to religion in the public sphere that at least deserve notice. One is his theological interest in the kind of Christian realism associated with Reinhold Niebuhr. Mr. Obama has a realistic awareness of the limits place upon human aspirations by human sin. Second is his rhetorical style which shows the influence of preaching patterns in the African-American church context as well as the patterns of social prophecy that are embedded in the Black church.

Perhaps Mr. Obama’s role is to add the voice of the Black church more strongly to religion in the public square. His influence may be greater than that. But it will take some time and distance for us to be sure.

Cultural and civil religion reflects the culture far more than it does a specific religious commitment. It functions inclusively of wide cultural expectations, which is why politicians use it. It follows culture; it does not lead it. So it is a mirror, not usually a challenge to people. Some of it urges people to live better, but much of it wraps political expectations around a cloak of religiosity. That is what we are seeing.

The time has come again in human history to strip all the bells and whistles we have adorned on God, and restore him to a common denominator God, acceptable to all of humanity. If not, we have multiple sovereign versions of Gods.

Ignorance can reach to a point where we put our God on the ground to fight with other’s God – like cock fights. General Boykin in Bush administration had declared, “I knew my God was bigger than his.” The radicals in Malaysia are fighting to own and enslave God; they are battling with Sikhs and Christians from using the word Allah to refer to God.

I have a theory for these men; let’s assume there is a customized God for everyone, and like men, God’s also have the need to prove who is superior and start slaughtering each other, and at the end, the powerful one would have killed them all and become the All-mighty God with unparalleled power. This is ridiculous and hope makes the point. As the saying goes, God has created us in his own image, I would say, we have created God in our own image and because it is a human definition, it is a fallible God creating irresponsible attitudes among us to fight with each other.

I loved the piece by author Diana Butler Bass, and add that God has not signed a deal with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or others behind the back of Atheists, Pagans, Wicca, Native Americans, Jains, Shinto or Zoroastrians. He does not treat anyone above others, and if he were, who wants a God like that?

In the near future, religion would be defined as an instrument that would help an individual find his own peace and peace with others, and any religion would serve the same purpose then. We are gradually heading towards a common God, a hands-off creator that is acceptable to most people including our Atheist friends, an inclusive God that is just and loves us all. We are endowed with complete freedom to mess our life or make it a heaven for us and others around us.

What does God want? Like a mother who wants her kids to do well, a teacher who wants his students to make A’s, a chef who wants all his patrons to enjoy the food he cooks, God wants all of us to live in harmony and cohesively. Our freedom and need to feel secure makes us violate the common good and resort to my good, and every now and then someone among us rises and gives us guidance towards living cohesively, and that guidance is called religion. Indeed, we are creating a more inclusive God for us, and it is a good thing.

JIM DENISON, President, Denison Forum on Truth and Culture

Phyllis Tickle says that every 500 years the Church holds “a giant rummage sale, shattering the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity.” She points to the Great Reformation (AD 1517), the Great Schism (AD 1054), monasticism (AD 590), and the time of Christ.

According to Tickle, we’re witnessing another transformation, one she calls “the great emergence.” President Obama’s civil spirituality expresses well this transition from propositions to pluralism, from dogma to community. While this “religion” is clearly more inclusive, not all change is progress.

Are we remaking religion into what we want it to be instead of what we need it to be? We don’t want a deity who holds us accountable and calls us to sacrificial service. But substitute medicine for religion: would we benefit from doctors who inspired us with their message of inclusion and positivity but never diagnosed our diseases?

C. S. Lewis characterized the “Life Force” religion of his day in a way that seems relevant to our discussion: “When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?”

RIC DEXTER, Nichiren Buddhist area leader, Soka Gakkai-USA

American Philosopher John Dewey proposed the recognition of a non-sectarian faith, distinguishing between “religion” and “the religious”. The ideals of civil spirituality would seem right at home with his proposal. The American creed of a deep realization of community, prosperity, mutual care, stewardship of the Earth, peacemaking, and human rights suggested by Ms. Bass allows the full faith and practice of our individual religions, while giving us the opportunity to join in our shared religious ideals.

I have often been put off by the way “God” is used in public discourse. It seemed to mean the Judeo-Christian deity, and implied that only by agreeing with that concept would one be a moral upstanding American. Discussions in private dialogue, however, have not carried that tone. The ideas described here as the new civil spirituality seems to reflect more of what people I encounter actually believe.

Instead of a debate between the dogmas of secular humanism on the one side and dogmatic religion on the other there is a third way, a middle path for talking about God in the public square.

Sometimes I’m asked “Do Buddhists believe in God?” The simple answer is “no” but I find I have to answer with a question, “What do you mean when you say ‘God’?” The answers I hear to that question sometimes are similar to the Buddhist belief in the ultimate law of the universe, the true entity of all things. While the answer is still “no” we realize a common ground, even with different religious beliefs.

Sharing in the civil spirituality breaks down the barriers created by religion and allows us to join in the religious, the American creed, the beliefs and ideals upon which we all agree.

If starting today no more children could be produced, precipitating mankind’s end, would your life have meaning? In a poll for a public radio podcast, the answer was no. Pollsters said the respondents seemed to be as surprised at the answer as they were. What are we doing all this for? This heroic trajectory of humanity from dwelling in caves to creating skyscrapers, surely it means something. Our journey began far before religions, nations or even races. Isn’t our species the first allegiance?

We are lost in the banal and beautiful minutiae of our daily lives, subconsciously haunted by the specter of inevitable death, and swimming in a media fray of politics and pop culture. It takes a direct question like that to get through. We need our tribes, our family and friends and the other circles we create. But we must loose our tribalism. While holding fast to the beliefs and culture that make us unique, the highest common denominators should be celebrated. It is upon such civic ideals that society must rest.

Everything old is new again, of course, and the arising civic philosophy is much like the state religion of Shinto in Japan. Its observances — followed by Buddhists, Christians, Taoists and secular alike — form the nation’s official holiday calendar. The Earth’s bounty is celebrated with equinoxes, flower festivals and Moon watching nights. Observances even address the psychological needs of the public such as ancestor honoring, adolescent rites of passage, and more.

For 20 years I created Winter SolstiCelebration, the largest interfaith celebration outside of New York City. Each year a spiritual theme was explored: oneness, humility, worthiness, to name a few. Held in a Christian church, it was attended by people of all faiths, but the spiritually unaffiliated embraced it the most. Within the next decade, SolstiCelebration type events will be far more common. Why? Because we need connection, to each other, our communities, and the Earth.

Of course, there is some hoping and dreaming in all of this. But it is easy to get caught up in the rush of events and focus only on today. For a moment, let's look over a longer horizon. We asked the Texas Faith panel this question:

What religious issue is likely to gain traction in 2014?

From health care, the gap between rich and poor, the Middle East, genetic medicine, Islam and the West, and most especially Pope Francis, our experts on religion and faith have predictions that are thoughtful, upbeat and diverse.

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The Texas Faith blog is a discussion among formal and informal religious leaders whose faith traditions express a belief in a transcendent power – or the possibility of one. While all readers are invited to participate in this blog, by responding in the comments section, discussion leaders are those whose religion involves belief in a divine higher power or those who may not believe in a transcendent power but leave room for the possibility of one. Within this framework, moderators William McKenzie and Wayne Slater seek to bring a diversity of thinkers onto the Texas Faith panels.